


No War Comes Cheaply

by flyingfanatic



Category: Wynonna Earp (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Canon-Typical Violence, F/F, Minor Character Death, Slow Burn, Vampire Wynonna, Werewolf Nicole Haught, Witch Waverly, Wynaught Brotp
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-02-08
Updated: 2018-09-24
Packaged: 2019-03-15 12:56:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 10
Words: 49,351
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13613838
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingfanatic/pseuds/flyingfanatic
Summary: Purgatory ain’t no place for a hero. It belongs to the cursed. To the vampires, the witches, and the beasts. Step inside the boundaries, if you dare, but stay too long and something will find you... and then Black Badge will make sure you stay.The uneasy peace that has existed for over a hundred years is threatened, and Waverly Earp will need every bit of help she can get to stop her home going to hell in a Stetson. That includes bringing her estranged sister back from a deal that practically cost Wynonna her soul, and enlisting the help of the newest, currently human, Sheriff’s deputy.Welcome to Purgatory.  You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.





	1. Starting again, somewhere new

**Author's Note:**

> This has been torturing me for the past month, so now I'm inflicting it on you too. Hope you enjoy. Just a little heads up that I did put the angst tag and the M rating there for reasons: this fic gets into some dark territory. Please check chapter summaries before you read, as the distressing stuff will come with forewarning.
> 
> Take care. 
> 
> Never ending and massive thanks to everybody's favourite [Smurf](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheGaySmurf/pseuds/TheGaySmurf) for helping me through this mess. You're the bestest.
> 
> [Fic playlist](https://open.spotify.com/user/bcwj72i4eteyjy4tx5pdtqaxp/playlist/1LPz6xREAnEfTbcIpIyOYx).
> 
> I can be found on Tumblr as @flyingfanatic

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole arrives in Purgatory, to find it even stranger than she expected. Waverly and Wynonna deal with a loss, and the questions it brings.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _The life, the love you'd die to heal_   
>  _The hope that starts the broken hearts_   
> 
> 
> Best of You - Foo Fighters

Nicole wonders why anybody would have told her it was a great idea to move to a town like Purgatory that, above and beyond the usual attractions that small towns typically struggle with, sports an unusually high death rate, some of the strangest census records in the database, and a marked disdain for the firearms laws that apply to the rest of the province.

In a town like Purgatory, everybody has a secret. Even if they don’t have an actual body.

One of those bodies had apparently left Shorty’s through the window instead of the door. Sheriff Nedley looks down at the groaning man on the sidewalk and sighs.

“Never a dull moment. C’mon.”

Two pairs of boots crunch on glass, swinging through the door to greet the aftermath of a bar fight. The department might only be a block away, but it’s clear the excitement is already over. Broken chairs and overturned tables are scattered like Legos, occasionally dotted with blood. The unconscious men vary from a near skeleton in full denim to burly beards that look like they walked straight from their hunting camp, but Nicole notices the same tattoo branding each of their necks.

There are only three men still standing, forming a surprisingly hesitant circle around a woman wielding half a beer bottle and a murderous expression. To her puzzlement, Nicole notices no one’s actually looking at the obvious weapon in her hand; they’re all focused on her mouth.

“This is neutral ground, Wynonna,” Nedley says as he walks towards her.

“Fuck that,” she spits back at him. “They killed Curtis! I know they did, _you_ know they did. They deserve this.”

Nedley glances at the men. Not one of them meets his eyes.

“Don’t push it,” he says to Wynonna. “Walk away, while you still can.”

“Or what? You gonna make me?”

Nedley moves in close enough to lay a hand on Wynonna’s arm. Nicole can’t see his eyes, but Wynonna can, and the uncontrolled rage vanishes from her face.

“Only if I have to,” Nedley murmurs.

For a few beats, there’s no sound but the drip of spilled beer from the bar counter. Then Wynonna tosses her makeshift weapon aside with a curse and storms out the bar. Nedley watches her go, wincing when she slams the back door hard enough to break the few bottles still intact behind the bar.

Nicole tenses, convinced the three men are going to take advantage of his turned back, but when Nedley just waves wearily and tells them to scram, they do.

Nedley parks himself at the remains of the bar and nods at Shorty, who has emerged from the back room with a steaming mug that he sets down in front of Nedley without a word.

Nicole can’t help staring.

“That’s… it? All this -“ she waves one arm to encompass the damage to the bar “- and nothing?”

“Reckon so.” Nedley sets down his mug. “Shorty - you pressing charges?”

Shorty answers, “Nah.”

“Well, there you go,” Nedley says, settling everything to his satisfaction, if not Nicole’s.

Nicole thinks this is completely ass-backwards crazy-town. _What the fuck is going on_ is obviously not something you can say to the Sheriff second day on the job, but biting it back definitely leaves a sour taste in her mouth.

“I need to have a quick chat with Shorty here – why don’t you wait in the car,” Nedley says. It’s not a question.

As the door swings shut behind her, Nicole can still hear Shorty ask, “Think she’s got what it takes?”

“If she hasn’t, she’s soon gonna find out.”

Nedley’s ‘quick chat’ sees Nicole through the rest of her own coffee, going cold in its paper cup along with her hopes for this latest new beginning. It’s not as if she’d been foolish enough to expect to be welcomed with open arms, but so far pretty much every interaction has fallen somewhere between bizarre and downright hostile, and she wishes she knew why.

When Nedley gets back in, he doesn’t check in over the radio. Not right away. Instead, he huffs his way through a breath, deep in and then deep out again, steeling himself.

“There’s some stuff you oughta know, about this town, if you’re gonna be sticking around.” Nicole leans forward, intrigued. “Small towns have their own ways of working. We’re low on manpower, I’m sure you realized that, and there’s some people, some _things_ , that it’s just better to let go. So long as nothing gets too out of hand, it’s just not worth it. You’re not gonna change them, so put the work in where you can make a difference. So long as nobody gets hurt, it’s really not worth the mountain of paperwork.”

“There were four unconscious men in that bar!” Nicole protests.

“And if any of them come in, I’ll happily make sure we file those charges, but – you saw the tattoos?

“Some sort of hook, on their necks.”

“See, I knew I recruited you for a reason. You’ve got a good eye.” The compliment sends a flush up the back of Nicole’s neck that she really hopes doesn’t show on her face. “Those men were from a gang based out of a trailer park, maybe twenty kilometers outside of town. They call themselves the Revenants, and they won’t be coming in. Bobo’s boys want as little to do with us as possible, and honestly, that is trouble we could do without.

“Well, you won’t get to see much of the place sitting around here. Day’s almost half gone, and we haven’t left Main Street.” Nedley yanks his seatbelt back into place, Nicole hurrying to imitate him. “Why don’t you let dispatch know we’re back?”

Nicole grabs at the radio with, she realises a little belatedly, over-excited haste. She might have spent six months at the academy, repeating the same voice procedure exercises over and over until it made her scream, but this is different. Finally, she’s out on the road, setting off to do what she trained for. She’s goddamn giddy, and glad of it.

“Dispatch, this is Haught, we are 10-8.”

“10-4... Haught.”

Even the pause before her name, and the giggle she’s sure follows once the radio cuts off, won’t be allowed to burst this bubble. People have been joking about her surname her whole life. _Be like a duck_ , Nicole tells herself, and grins.

//

Waverly turns the door handle with a practiced twist that accommodates its tendency to stick, and steps into the mudroom. Her boots squeak on the linoleum, which never seems to stay clean long, no matter how many times it’s mopped. She looks around the room that she knows so well, as if its familiarity will mean nothing’s really changed.

Mostly, it hasn’t.

Curtis’s gloves still sit on the shelf where he leaves them at the end of every day. Waverly touches the hole at the end of one finger that he never got around to mending, and comes away with a slight layer of grease. 

It had been a warm day the last time Curtis had walked out that door, and he’d left his jacket behind as well. Waverly runs her fingers over the worn and faded cotton, down to the missing button at the end of one sleeve, the motion disturbing a smell of horse hair, and treated harness, and the lingering, sweet, long-lost-summer scent of old hay.

But there’s an empty spot where his boots normally sit.

Waverly knows Gus is going to tidy Curtis’s things away before the funeral; she knows that. They’re both just letting him linger, for as long as they can without getting swept up in his absence.

Only when Waverly slips off her own shoes is she ready to call out for Gus.

There’s an answering shout from the kitchen, and Waverly walks in to see every available surface crammed with pies, cakes, and rolls in various stages of preparation.

“Do you think you’ve baked enough?” Waverly asks, with a grin she’s not really bothering to suppress.

“Don’t get smart with me, you’re here to help.” Gus’s tone is clipped, but that doesn’t cow Waverly. She’ll only get worried when Gus starts swearing. “Who would have thought that fool husband of mine was so darn popular, eh? Seems as if half the county’s invited itself to his wake. Roll out that pastry for me, would you?”

A comfortable silence falls between them as Waverly concentrates on the delicate task. She’s always liked the softness of pie dough. It has to be handled gently, to be coaxed into shape. 

Out of the corner of one eye, she watches Gus bustle in the same way she has since Waverly needed a stool to reach the counter. Somehow, Gus balances five different things simultaneously, bouncing from one to the other like a vengeful pinball, always just one step ahead of disaster.

Into the quiet, Gus decides she has a topic to bring up. “Shorty said Wynonna was by the bar earlier, causing trouble.”

Waverly freezes mid-roll. “My sister, Wynonna?”

“No, the other Wynonna. Yes, your sister! Ruffling everyone’s feathers by claiming it was some of Bobo’s boys did Curtis in.”

“Did they?”

Gus swats her with the wooden spoon she’s holding. “Waverly! For shame. Don’t go stirring that pot. You, at least, should know better.”

“I know ‘heart attack’ is Nedley’s second favorite go-to, right after ‘coyote attack’.” In the deep pause that follows, Waverly knows she’s hit her mark. “ _Was_ Curtis killed by one of the Revenants?”

“Might be, might be,” Gus replies irritably. “Might not. Doesn’t really matter either way, ‘cause asking those kinds of questions is only going to get more people dead.”

Waverly suppresses a snarky reply and a wave of frustration. Instead of talking back to Gus, she glares at the pile of dirty crockery she’s created, and decides she hasn’t got the patience for washing by hand. She stares at the line of pastry baked onto a cake tin and lets the irritation come, reaches for her necklace, and feeds it until she feels the power tingle down her arm and gently rattle the pans together, and she gives them a little push...

Before the dishes can lift off the table, Gus swats her again.

“What have I told you about using magic in my kitchen?!”

“Sorry, Gus.”

A chastened Waverly picks up the dishes and carries them over to the sink like a sensible person. Outside the window, a stream of leaves are blowing back and forth across the driveway, just as they had been the very first time Gus had scolded her for trying to bibbidi-bobbidi-boo her way through the chores.

//

_Wynonna and Waverly had only been at Gus’s for a few days when the leaves had begun to fall._

_Curtis had said the manual labor would be good for them. Keep them occupied. Keep their minds off of what had happened._

_Wynonna had said Curtis could clear up his own leaves if it was so important. She didn’t need a distraction; she needed revenge._

_Curtis had won, and a very grumpy Wynonna had ended up raking leaves with all the help Waverly’s six-year-old arms could offer, until Gus had taken pity on them._

_“Y’know, there is another way to do that. I could show you, if you wanted.”_

_Gus had taken the brooch she always wore pinned to her neckerchief, told them to close their eyes, roll up their sleeves, and focus on the wind. That’s power, right there, she’d pointed out. Enough strength to move the leaves, if they could figure out how to make it go where they needed to._

_She’d shown it to them small, at first. A single leaf. They could both manage that, and even Wynonna had cracked a smile when the curled, red-brown edges had revolved slowly above her waiting palm._

_But when Gus had suggested they tried gathering up the leaves, she’d lost Wynonna._

_Waverly had twirled around the driveway in her own little tornado of leaves, laughing at how easily the magic came._

_No matter how hard she tried, Wynonna couldn’t get past that single leaf._

_“This magic stuff sucks balls.”_

_“Wynonna! Language.”_

_Wynonna had stormed off, but for once, Waverly didn’t care. She had gotten Gus all to herself for the rest of the afternoon, drawing down the wind to make leaves dance._

_For the first time since she’d been carried away from the only home she’d ever known, Waverly hadn’t been followed by the echoes of screams. She was useful, she was happy, she was wanted, and she never wanted it to end._

_It ended, though, when she tried to bring the wind inside and the kettle had ended up on the floor in a growing puddle of water._

_“No magic in the kitchen!” Gus had scolded as she toweled the floor. “You’ll break something, or worse.”_

_“I won’t!”_

_“But you might. Throwing magic around like that is how you end up with talking teapots and a roasting tin that skulks off every time you get a chicken out of the freezer.” At the tremble in Waverly’s mouth, Gus had softened. She had crouched down so she was looking Waverly dead in the eye, and taken one hand in hers. “You’re good at this, baby girl. Someday, you might even be great at it. But the thing to remember about magic is to only use what you need. The trick to magic is the same as any other power, any other weapon - knowing when not to use it. Okay?”_

_“Okay,” Waverly grumbled._

_“That’s my girl.”_

//

The day of Curtis’s funeral, Waverly’s alarm goes off while it’s still dark outside. It’s so early, and it’s been so long since she’d slept in her room in the McCready house, that it takes her a few moments to remember where she is. Her old room looks nothing like her space above the bar. A single bed pushed against one wall huddles under posters and photographs plastered so thickly that the paint underneath only has cracks to peek through. Her stuffed animals vie for pride of place on a shelf, a sight she’d never have let Champ see, because she knew he’d never forget it.

Waverly flicks on her bedside lamp. Out the window, the quiet grey-blue of the sky is plunged into darkness against the harsh electric light. Waverly runs both hands through her hair, trying to will her brain into some kind of working order.

On a mental count of three, she swings her legs out and shoves the covers away. The morning cold hits her in a way she’s hated her whole life, but at least it shocks her into action, skipping quickly over to her dresser. The faster she can get into clothes, the warmer she’ll be, Waverly keeps telling herself.

By the time she’s jumped off the bottom step and made a beeline for the kitchen, Waverly’s shaken off the chill, if not the haze of sleep. As the kettle heats on the stove, she watches the first touches of pink curl around the edges of the clouds.

Her eyes might be on the sunrise, but her mind is back at Shorty’s.

She’s not sure if she wishes she’d been there last night. It’s been three years since she last saw Wynonna. Three years in which what little news she’d gotten had made her wish she’d heard nothing at all.

The water’s boiling by the time the sun finally puts in an appearance, so she abandons her wandering thoughts in favor of the cup of tea she knows she’ll need to get her through morning chores. There are many things she’s missed about ranch life since she moved out, but the early morning routine is not one of them. It’s to help Gus out, she reminds herself, just this once. Big day.

A big day, and looks like it’s going to be a clear, sunny one. That’s good; means they shouldn’t be getting any unwanted visitors at the wake.

As she walks into the barn, Waverly’s greeted by the rows of empty box stalls stretching away on either side, wide open to reveal the fresh sawdust already laid out. Knowing there are horses outside waiting to fill them, the stalls seem almost friendly.

As soon as the first pellets hit the plastic of the horses’ feed buckets, they start clamoring for their breakfast, whinnying and charging about in their field. Waverly carries on in the same unhurried manner. Every single morning, the horses claim they’re starving, despite having been out on fresh grass all night. Such drama queens.

Well, they can wait while Waverly does the job properly, and maybe while she stops to greet the barn cats as well.

A little black one trots up, sideways but bold, and does his best to trip Waverly over. She laughs, sets down her buckets, and crouches down to offer her hand for a friendly head-butt. He winds his way back and forth, enjoying the exclusive attention, but then suddenly shoots off.

There’s a stranger in the barn.

Waverly looks up to see the familiar Purgatory police uniform hanging off an unfamiliar frame. She’s tall, even after Waverly picks herself up off the ground. She’s smiling, a soft curl just at the corners of her mouth that asks nothing of the world, but that it’s there to be smiled at. She’s disarming, and Waverly stares just a second too long before her brain kicks in.

“Oh, hi,” Waverly says. “Can I help you?”

“Hey. I’m Nicole – Officer Haught.” Nicole slides her hat off her head with an air of delicate politeness Waverly’s not used to seeing. There’s an alert vulnerability to the gesture that reminds Waverly of nothing more than a deer, staring expectantly at her from across the fields, waiting to see if either of them is going to run. “I’m looking for Gus McCready?”

Waverly rubs her hands on her pants in a desperate effort to clean them, suddenly aware of how tatty she looks in her barn clothes – faded jeans and a hand-me-down flannel of Curtis’s – next to Nicole’s perfectly pressed uniform.

“She – she’s still asleep, I think...” Waverly trails off, caught in Nicole’s steady gaze for a moment. She feels odd, under Nicole’s open eyes and the promise in the sweep of her smile. Not really exposed, not truly threatened, but something, an uneasy tingle. Somewhere between rabbit in the headlights and hopeful, with a lump sticking the thoughts in her throat. She has to say something - anything - to snap herself out of it. “Is there something wrong?”

“Oh.” Nicole’s eyebrows shoot up. “Oh, no, no. Sheriff Nedley just asked me to pick something up on my way into the station this morning.”

“Do you know what?”

Nicole shakes her head. She’s sliding her fingers back and forth around the brim of her Stetson, and Waverly finds herself mesmerized by the small twitches of her fingers. The uncertain beat of her thumb against the crisp, defined dent, the slide of the calluses against the bright, unfaded beige... Waverly’s never seen anyone hold a hat as if they’re holding their heart before.

Nicole’s fingers only still when another of the barn cats seems to appear from nowhere at her feet.

With a soft smile of surprise, Nicole crouches down to stroke her. The pant hem of her khakis rises up, revealing boots are shined to within an inch of their lives. Nicole offers the cat a fist, as if she were a strange dog, rather than open inviting fingers, but the cat doesn’t seem to mind.

Waverly watches with amazement as the tabby rubs her head enthusiastically against Nicole’s hand. “Wow... she never likes anyone.”

“Really?” Nicole says, turning her bemused smile up to Waverly. “She seems so friendly.”

“Well, she seems to like you.” Waverly meets Nicole’s eyes and feels a flush build behind her ears, as if she hadn’t been speaking for the cat.

“What’s her name?”

“Curtis didn’t like giving the barn cats names – he said there were too many, and they went missing too often to get attached. We usually just call her big ginger. She’s tough – cats don’t normally get as old as her around here, y’know, she starts slowing down and then – well, I was thinking of finding someplace she could be a housecat, before the Re – coyotes get her. Lots of coyotes ‘round here.”

“Well, I hope you find a good home for her.” Nicole straightens up, careful not to push the cat away.

When she’s standing again, Waverly is certain the warmth behind her ears has got to be broadcasting some kind of screaming signal that she just can’t turn off. The noise of the horses has faded almost to nothing, and Nicole opens her mouth as if she wants to say something, but then hesitates, as if the words have suddenly fled.

The whistle of the kettle from inside the house breaks the silence.

“That means Gus is up,” Waverly says with something close to, but not quite, relief. “You want me to walk you up to the house?”

“No, thanks, I think I can find it.” 

Off course she can find it. Waverly mentally kicks herself.

Nicole replaces the Stetson on her head and tweaks the brim in farewell before walking out of the barn. Waverly watches her go, attempting to suppress the grin spreading over her face and the strange bubble that’s trying to rise up her spine, completely unaware of the ginger cat now winding her way between Waverly’s legs.

//

As soon as Wynonna cuts her engine, she knows something’s gone wrong. She can smell it; that hard tang of fresh blood. Even after three years, it hits her so hard that she almost falls off her bike. The world brightens almost painfully around her as her pupils dilate, and she stops caring about her bike, she stops caring about the rising sun and the burn tingling at the gaps in her leathers. She even stops caring about Curtis, in that moment.

All she cares about is what’s waiting inside that roadside restaurant.

She could claw her skin off with the urge, if it would only close the gap across the parking lot just a little bit faster than her feet can, but when she walks in the door, she realizes she’s too late. The blood that’s driven her almost mad is old, hanging in the air.

Three pairs of eyes regard her dispassionately, silhouetted and gasping in the doorway.

“Shut the door,” one orders, “You’re letting daylight in. And you’re late.”

“Got tied up in town,” she lies, voice still thick with hunger. “Sherriff’s on the warpath.”

“We know,” says a new voice, from off to Wynonna’s left. In the doorway stands a woman who looks angry enough to toss all four of them out on their asses, and with the muscle to make good on it. “We heard all about your stunt in town. Boss wants to see you.”

As Wynonna follows Valdez deeper into the restaurant, she tries to run through her reasons in her head. Power. Revenge. Control. There was something else, which she’d been cradling in a quiet corner, but it had fled at the first smell of blood.

Doc shuts her down before she can even open her mouth.

He has business interests. He has plans. He has shipments waiting and buyers lined up and delicate arrangements she is not to upset. The Revenant pack is now off limits, indefinitely.

“They killed my uncle!” Wynonna yells at him.

Doc doesn’t even bother to look up at her. “That’s no concern of mine.”

“So you’re just going to let the Revs go ‘round doing whatever they want?” Out of the corner of her eye she sees a couple of the others tense at the threat veiled under her words.

“So long as they leave me and my affairs in peace, those curs can do as they damn well please. What’s one more dead shifter to us?” Wynonna is practically bursting at the seams with barely contained rage. Doc sighs. “It’s been too long since you last killed something. It’s making you tense. Go, get it out of your system.”

Wynonna takes the dismissal and stalks off, careful not to let her scowl so much as flicker until she’s out of sight.

As soon as she’s sure she’s alone, Wynonna lets the sickening sense of guilt double her over. To think she’d been eager to get into the restaurant. Every time she swears to herself that she can break past it, that maybe this time she can be strong enough, she only finds out how weak she really is. How dangerous she is, to anyone around her.

Only a few hours ago, in Shorty’s, she’d found herself able to put down her weapon. To walk away from a fight. To let Nedley tell her it was over, and let that be the way it was. She’d thought that was a step forward.

Well, here’s her hundred-yard-dash backwards.

The door creaks behind her and Wynonna immediately slams her walls back down.

“Hey, kid.” The new arrival has a gruff voice, but his tone is kind enough. “You good?”

“Just fucking peachy.”

Wynonna folds her arms and glares at him until he shuts the door, but they both know her beef isn’t with him. In all her time with the Bandidos, Morrison is the closest thing Wynonna has to what might be called a friend, and without a doubt her strongest ally. The last name of a lawman doesn’t make a girl popular in a biker gang.

Morrison rubs a hand over the scratchy wire of his beard as he muses on the best way to talk her around. “Look, I know you and the Boss got your own thing going on -“ Wynonna snorts “- but you know better than to think that’ll save you if you cross him. He wants to stay under the radar, and you should, too.”

Wynonna gestures at the door, and the ruined restaurant beyond. “Yeah, he’s really subtle.”

Morrison shrugs. “You know how Doc feels about runners that cheat him. Anyway, ain’t nothing you can do about any of it until this evening. Go sleep on it, maybe then you’ll see some sense.” On his way out, Morrison pauses in the door to add, “And, Wynonna – try not to get yourself killed.”

He might be able to shrug off Curtis’s death as easily as Doc did, but Wynonna just _can’t_. For the first time since she got off her bike, she doesn’t notice the smells in the air or the hunger eating at her sides. Finally, she thinks, she might have found a thought that’s hotter than the hunger.

The others might be killers, but they’re cowards, the lot of them. Looks as if she’ll have to start this war all on her own.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> RESEARCH NOTE : The Bandidos don’t actually operate in Canada anymore. After a massacre in Ontario, the remaining members became part of a different gang, The Rock Machine, which is still around today. I’ve chosen to keep the Bandido name anyway, for the sake of familiarity.


	2. We are the people our parents warned us about

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole gets stuck into some police work, Waverly goes looking for answers that no one wants to give her, and Wynonna reflects on what her deal with the devil has cost her.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I spoke to God today and she said that she's ashamed_   
>  _What have I become? What have I done?_   
>  _I spoke to the devil today and he swears he's not to blame_   
>  _And I understood, 'cause I feel the same_
> 
> Wrong Side of Heaven – Five Finger Death Punch

Nicole is so incredibly grateful that Main Street is still empty when she parks her squad car. With no one there to see, she can let her head fall back against the rest, and sigh.

It’s been so very long since a woman so completely took her breath away; Nicole had almost forgotten how intense it felt. That almost immediate feeling, beyond sense, beyond thought, that here was someone important. Here was someone that was going to mean something to her, regardless of what she meant to them.

She almost laughs. Look at her, going so heart-thumpingly silly on first sight.

Of all the things she’d expected to run into when she took this job, Waverly Earp was definitely a very welcome surprise.

When Nicole finally strides into the station that morning, riding on her own personal cloud of Waverly-induced joy, she realizes that the Sheriff’s got his own weather going on. Nedley’s sporting a big black storm cloud that rumbles as he paces around the bullpen.

“Sheriff…” Nicole approaches him tentatively, not out of fear, but out of kindness. She might not have been in town for long, but already it seems to her that Nedley gets very few niceties and whole lot of brown stuff.

“What?” Nedley snaps, then softens. “Oh, it’s you, Officer Haught.”

“Yeah, me… Sir, is there something going on?”

“Too much. That from Gus?” Nedley nods at the cardboard box under Nicole’s arms.

“Oh, yeah,” she says.

“Thanks for picking it up – just throw it on my desk.”

“No problem…” Nicole starts to say, but she’s soon talking to herself. Whatever has got Nedley’s feathers ruffled, it must be pretty bad to turn the man who’d spent hours telling her stories the day before into this terse grump.

Nicole sets the box on Nedley’s desk, beside a picture of him with a tousle-haired young girl, then hurries into the main office. It’s busier than it was yesterday, but Nicole manages to chase down an officer she recognizes.

“Hey, uh, Chambers, what’s bothering the Sheriff? He seems a little…”

“Pissed?” Chambers tosses a file onto his desk, and curses when it flies off the far end onto the floor. “Yeah, you would be too, if some idiot had cleaned out every gun store in town the night before your best friend’s funeral. First day he’s wanted off in three years, and that lands on his plate.”

“Funeral?” Nicole asks.

“Yeah, funeral. Curtis McCready’s, he was ki – he died last week.” Chambers gives her a side-eye. “Weren’t you just by the McCready Ranch this morning?”

“Yeah, but she never said…” Nicole trails off, hunting through her memory of the brief encounter in the barn that morning for anything she’d missed. Waverly had seemed a little thrown, that was certain, but then Nicole had been too. She’d just assumed she was better at hiding it.

Mrs. McCready hadn’t mentioned anything either, though. Grief is one of those things everyone deals with differently, but people who aren’t used to death in their lives rarely take it this… calmly.

Chambers rolls his eyes, probably in lament to clueless rookies, and stoops for his scattered files. Nicole snaps herself back to the present, and goes to help him.

To her surprise, Chambers swats her away. “I got it, I got it.”

Nicole feels like a discarded goldfish, standing there while Chambers finishes sweeping his file back together. Every time she feels like things are beginning to settle, something odd throws her, like this.

Just as Nicole starts to wander towards her own desk, Nedley comes back in. The officers gather around him almost immediately, as if he’d set off some homing beacon only they could hear. He rapidly assigns each of them an address, pauses for questions, and then lets them scatter to their tasks.

At the back of the group, standing ramrod straight, Nicole tries not to look too excited at the prospect of working an actual crime scene.

“Alright then, Haught, you’re with me.” Nedley says. “We’ll take the place at the corner of Cornwall and Main. You remember where that is?”

“Yes, sir.” It seems like a poor time to mention she’s already memorized every road within the town boundaries.

“Meet you there.”

//

A pile of decimated pie dishes and a hump of new earth next to the vegetable patch are the only signs left of the parade of people that had passed through the McCready Ranch that afternoon.

Gus’s estimate hadn’t been too far off; it seemed as if the whole town had come out to see Curtis buried. It made sense, in a sad sort of way. Curtis’s regular trips “goin’ visitin’” had been one of Waverly’s favorite things as a child, struggling to watch the wide fields go by over the dashboard.

Keeping a lid on the melting pot of factions that made up the town of Purgatory had always been dangerous work, and had only become worse since Ward’s death, but Curtis had always been careful enough.

That was before the calls had started coming in.

As Wynonna had grown wilder, the trips Gus had deemed safe enough for Waverly to go on had dwindled, eventually to nothing.

Now, there will never be another trip, and the square form on the porch next to Gus belongs to Shorty instead.

They’re quiet when Waverly comes out. Not quiet in the way of a hastily cut-off conversation, but in the way two people who know each other well enough to not need words can be.

Gus turns to greet Waverly with a light touch to the elbow. “Who was on the phone?”

“Chrissy,” Waverly replies. “Trying to persuade me to go out with her tonight.”

“That sounds like a fine idea,” Gus says, to Waverly’s surprise.

“But, I can’t –“

“Yes, you can,” Gus insists. “I’ll be just fine.”

“I can stay,” Shorty offers, but Gus brushes him off.

“I’m a grown woman, I don’t need you two fools hovering around me like a pair of worried hens. Go!”

Flicking her dish towel with devastating accuracy, Gus chases them both off the porch and then disappears back inside, shutting the door firmly behind herself.

Shorty shakes his head, with a slight curl to his mouth that would have been a grin on a different man.

Waverly leans against the door to her Jeep, fiddling anxiously with her keys, steeling herself to the thoughts that have been nagging her all day. “Hey, Shorty, can I ask you a question?”

“Anything, Waverly, you know that.”

“How did Uncle Curtis die?”

Shorty harrumphs. “Did you ask your Aunt that?”

“Yeah,” Waverly admits, knowing she’s lost this lead before she got anywhere.

“And what did she say?”

“That it was dangerous to go around asking questions like that.”

“Got to say, I agree with her, kid. You don’t want that kind of trouble. None of us do.” Shorty opens his door and starts to climb in, but then pauses halfway, one foot up in his truck. “You should go out tonight. Have fun. Live a little. Find a little light.”

//

Waverly doubts how much light she’ll find out on the town in Purgatory, especially when her night starts by meeting Chrissy at the Sheriff’s department. It’s not exactly _bright lights, big city_ , but it’s the best they’ve got. It’s _all_ they’ve got.

The last person Waverly had been expecting to see is perched at the front desk, bright as a button.

“He-ey,” Waverly says, taking a half-step sideways. Now she gets to add a weird fluttering nervousness on top of the swirling emotions she’s spent the day trying to sit on, and suddenly it all feels a little too much.

“Hi. Long time, no see.”

There’s those open eyes, shining at her as if she’s not cracking apart from the inside out.

“I – I need to see Nedley,” Waverly blurts. She tries not to notice the way Nicole’s face falls, but it sinks into her gut anyway.

“Sheriff?” Nicole calls.

“What?” Nedley pokes his head irritably out of his office. “Oh, hey, Waverly, how’re you doing?”

“Uh, good,” Waverly says vaguely, trying not to glance back at Nicole, the one person in town she definitely cannot quiz Nedley in front of. “Can I talk to you? Privately?”

The request leaves Nedley looking a little confused, but he gestures her inside his office without protest. “So, what can I do for you?”

“Curtis,” Waverly states bluntly.

Nedley sighs. “I was wondering when you’d get to that.”

“You’ve got a file on him, don’t you?” Waverly folds her arms tightly around herself, as if the action can bolster her resolve. “I want to see it.”

“You know I can’t do that.”

“But you can sit back and pretend that Curtis’s death was an accident?” Waverly regrets the outburst almost before she’s finished, but she’s just so frustrated. Another dead end, another blocked tunnel.

Nedley watches Waverly hover on the verge of angry tears for a moment. Then she just collapses on the couch, unable to contain the tears she’d been holding onto all day. He grabs a pack of tissues off his desk, and gingerly lowers himself next to her.

While Waverly rips into the box, he just sits there, waiting until she’s got her breathing back to something like normal, and finished cleaning up the worst of the tears. He pats her with a gentle, but slightly clumsy, hand.

“Look, kid, I miss Curtis too. We all do. But nothing good will come from digging into that pile of worms. You’ve got to let it go.”

Waverly swallows her disappointment, but she can feel it keep bubbling, a stew ready to spill it’s lid. She wouldn’t want to be in Wynonna’s shoes, not for all the guacamole in the Triangle, but she hates that they keep treating her like the baby.

She knows what Purgatory is. She knows the risks. Hiding them never made her any safer anyway.

When she’s ready, Waverly nods, and lets Nedley lead her back out of his office to see Chrissy has arrived and installed herself at the front desk, where she is happily talking Nicole’s ear off.

“Dad! There you are. Here.” Chrissy hands Nedley a wrapped oblong package, beaming.

Nedley opens the paper. “Whole wheat? Whole _wheat_? What am I, a squirrel?”

“It’s better for you. Don’t worry, I didn’t stint you on the cheese.” Chrissy laughs, and even Waverly cracks a smile. “We’ve got to get going, those boys aren’t going to dance with themselves!”

As Chrissy drags her out of the building, Waverly catches sight of a flash of red and an answering smile. A little light, in the dark.

//

Even after three long years, Wynonna can’t get used to the idea of waking up in the dark. Every evening, she finds herself waking up before the rest of the Bandidos. Alone, she’s watched countless twilights fall. 

It’s been her time to think, once she remembered how.

Doc continues to snooze away, the pale skin of his back turned to face Wynonna. He’s never noticed her early rising. Never even stirred. Wynonna throws some clothes over her body before she sneaks off out of the room.

Ever since Doc's public edict against going after the Revenants, Wynonna had been keeping her head low. It wouldn’t take a genius to notice that Doc had the other Bandidos watching her every move. Judging by his sound sleep, and the empty rooms beyond, this is Wynonna's first unobserved night, and she's ready to take advantage.

It's been a long time since she's flown solo. Even longer since she last had a reason.

Wynonna walks outside into the fading light, and runs a hand over the handle of her Sportster. Curtis had helped her pick the motorcycle out the day she'd turned eighteen. Two summers of any job she could get, all the evening waitressing she could handle, and enough good behavior to persuade Curtis to match her stake, and the road was hers.

Curtis had been good to her. Wynonna knew she'd broken his heart the day she'd made her deal with Doc, but she'd had no other choice.

//

_When Wynonna arrives at Pussy Willows, she’s not sure if it’s a good or bad thing that Morrison is manning the door. She’s glad of the friendly face, but his obvious delight at seeing her again drops into her gut like a lead weight._

_“Aphrodite!” he calls out. “You’re back.”_

_“Yeah. Yeah, I am.”_

_Something about the way Wynonna’s words thump into place makes Morrison pause. He withdraws slowly from the bear hug he’d wrapped her in, and stares appraisingly at her face. Whatever he sees in her eyes tells him she’s here to stay this time, and the smile falls from his mouth._

_“I’ll go get the Boss, then,” he says gruffly._

_She has no other choice. She can’t let it happen again. She can’t let someone get hurt because she’s too weak to protect them._

_No matter the price, she needs the power. She needs the strength to get in this fight, before she loses what’s left of her family._

_When Doc strides into the room, flanked by cold-eyed men Wynonna doesn’t recognize, he doesn’t ask her anything._

_He sees the despair in her eyes, and Wynonna’s relieved._

_She doesn’t think she could bear finding the words to tell him why she’s there. Why she’s finally willing to take the deal he offered her._

_No matter the cost._

_There was pain. There was screaming. There was a strange sensation, wriggling inside her head... and then it was gone._

_In its place was an overpowering scent of iron that she followed to the sound of a heart beating far too loud, that she could see leaping in a throat more clearly than she’d ever seen anything in her life, and she knew it would be soft in a way that made her teeth lengthen with the need to feel that warmth on her tongue, and then she **leaped** -_

_Suddenly, there was only one thing that mattered. There was nothing else. Nothing but the hunger._

//

“Now you boys look like you know how to party.”

It would be strange party, that’s for sure. The three Revenants Wynonna’s surprised look up from their shallow hole, and it’s fairly clear why Bobo’s chosen them to send out to the dusty-ass end of nowhere, to an inexplicable and thankless task.

Being a few cards short of a deck would imply they knew how to count.

One immediately recognizes her, and lifts his shovel threateningly. “Fuck off.”

“Aw, c’mon, the helmet hair isn’t that bad, is it?”

“We know who you are. Whatever Doc wants, we don’t have it.”

“I’m not here for him.”

Wynonna moves, faster than the Rev can lift his weapon, and with her hand around his throat and her teeth shining mere inches from his artery, his friends don’t have a clear shot. She never stops being thankful for stupid shifters. If they’d been willing to ruin their clothes and wolfed out the second they saw her, this would have been a very different fight.

Instead, she’s got them by the short and curlies.

“I’m here for answers about my uncle. And you’re going to give them to me.”

//

Doc had been right about one thing; it had been far too long since she’d let go like that. Let the hunger rise up from behind her eyes and take over, forgot the guilt eating away at her and just existed. For a while, it had felt good.

But then it was over, and there was nothing left but three bodies at her feet.

The guilt had come back with a vengeance, and she had nothing to show for it. She was back, riding her Sportster out on the flank, one roar in the group, but alone in her head.

Strangely, the gang seems to be slowing, and Wynonna drifts back from wading through the cattails of her thoughts to see three squad cars blocking the road.

Nedley must be feeling either mighty brave or mighty pissed to risk such a confrontational move.

The other officers might be close to the cover of their cars, weapons drawn, but Nedley stands in the center of the road, just waiting.

Doc comes to a laconic halt in front of the Sheriff, as if he felt like stopping anyway. Pointedly not looking at Nedley, he pulls a little silver case from his front pocket and lights up a cigarillo. Doc puffs out a few clouds before he speaks.

“What can I do for you, Sheriff?”

“Someone cleaned out a couple of guns stores last week. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”

Doc laughs, and the unpleasantly derisive sound spreads out through the rest of the Bandidos. Not for the first time, Wynonna is glad they tolerate her idiosyncrasy of actually wearing a helmet; no one can see her expression under the dark glass.

“Now, what would we be wanting with guns?” He grins at Nedley with all the warmth of a crocodile, and the message is perfectly clear: _my weapons are right here._

“Same reason you do anything around here; money and power. And that’s a concerning amount of power. I want to know where it ended up.”

“Not with me. Perchance you are _barking_ up the wrong tree?” Doc chuckles again, but this time doesn’t wait for anyone to join in. “If you’ve finished making unfounded accusations, we’ll be on our way.”

Nedley nods, but before he turns, he looks right at Wynonna, and she finds another reason to be glad of her helmet. She doesn’t think she could stand making eye contact with Nedley.

Not when the sound of the only time she’d ever heard him crying haunts her every day.

//

_He’d cried into his wife’s fur, and Wynonna hadn’t been able to help._

_They’d surrounded her, torn her down, and Wynonna hadn’t been able to help._

_She’d been there for Wynonna, but there were too many, snarling in the night, and Wynonna hadn’t been able to help._

_They’d descended on her, and Wynonna had run._

_Gus had said Peacemaker was her talisman, that the magic would come, and she’d be able to help._

_It had failed when she’d needed it the most, so she threw it down a well._

_They’d all trusted her, relied on her, and it had been a mistake._

_She couldn’t help._

_She’d failed._

//

The Bandidos move through the house silently. There’s no anger or joy to it, just a businesslike focus. A ruthless efficiency.

 _Nedley should never have told Doc about the guns_ , Wynonna thinks bitterly, listening to a brief scream further down the hallway that’s quickly silenced.

For all he might flash his teeth about, everybody knew guns were Doc’s favorite part of his racket. With Nedley’s inadvertent tip-off, it didn’t take him long to find the cheat. Doc hates runners that cheat him.

In one room, Wynonna finds herself alone. Alone, except for a trembling face, hiding under the bed. It’s a terrible hiding place.

_Fuck. Why is it always the little ones?_

Sure with every passing moment that she’s going to hear footsteps coming down the hall, Wynonna bundles him deep into the closet.

“Stay here, stay quiet. You know what a police siren sounds like?” He nods. “No matter what, you don’t come out until you hear that. No matter what.”

//

The Sheriff had insisted she stayed on desk duty, that the other officers can handle it. When Nicole sees the faces that walk back in, the blanked-off, square-jawed tension in each of them, she thinks he may well have made the right call.

They bring back one survivor.

“I want you to take the kid’s statement,” Nedley says.

“Me?”

“Yes, you.”

“But - I -“

“It’s a statement, Haught, I’m not asking you to adopt him. Just go in there and talk to him, try and find out what happened. Video interview room’s all set up and ready to go.” He pauses, and seems to really notice the concern on her face for the first time. “I wouldn’t be asking you if I didn’t think you were the best officer for the job, okay?”

Nicole nods, and is left hovering in a strange space after Nedley walks away. He’s not a man to throw praise about carelessly. If he says something, he means it. After alternating between dogging her every move outside the station and leaving her to rot on traffic duty, it feels to Nicole that he’s finally opened the door to let her run free, and all she can do is blink as the bright sunshine hits her.

She shakes herself back to the here and now, to the job.

The kid in question is sitting next to her desk, waiting. Nicole goes and sits down in her own chair, and considers him.

She hasn’t got much experience with children. She’s seen people crouch down to talk to them, but that’s probably just with the younger ones. He looks on the teetering edge before hitting adolescence; the small child routine would just offend him.

 _Look at him, actually look at **him**_ , Nicole tells herself. He might be glaring out at the world, but his bottom lip is trembling almost imperceptibly.

She smiles. “Hi, I’m Nicole.”

//

Giving a report is stressful enough, but having to give it to a superior on the move is nearly impossible. She wants to get to the end as fast as she can, the questions she needs to ask burning a hole in her tongue, but dammit she’s going to do this properly.

“…And then, when he said the gang member that helped him was a woman, I went and dug up some photos of the files, y’know, and...” Nicole hands Nedley the photo.

He finally stops to stare at it. “Wynonna Earp.”

“Yeah, Wynonna… wait, Wynonna _Earp_?”

Nedley starts to walk away from her again, and Nicole pursues him with a mounting sense of indignant outrage held on a very short leash.

“She’s the woman we didn’t bring in my very first day here, at Shorty’s. You said it was a small town thing, nothing to worry about, you never said she was an active member of a biker gang! Sheriff, what’s going on here?”

He stops marching off and spins to face her, at the end of the corridor, out of sight. His voice is low, and could easily be taken for anger, but there’s a desperation to it that rings with fear.

“Look, Haught, you did a damn good job today, with that kid. But you really can’t let your imagination run away with you, and definitely not at the top of your voice in the middle of my station! This isn’t Quebec; our gangs are motorbike enthusiasts with dreams of devilry, okay? God help me, but I thought you were better than this.”

“Sorry, Sherriff,” Nicole mumbles.

“Just don’t do it again. And go get the kid squared away with child services.”

Nicole stays in the corner after Nedley leaves, bumping back against the wall for the reassuring solidity of the drywall. Of course, she had to end up with a crush on a woman whose family is wrapped up in the fucking _mob_.

//

“She’s back.”

Nedley’s voice sounds distorted, but Waverly’s had plenty of practice listening at the grate she’d discovered after Wynonna had crashed her tenth birthday, swinging a whiskey bottle.

“You’re sure?”

“Eyewitness report places her at a Bandido hit last night. They abducted most of the family, but – Gus, she’s the reason I even _have_ an eyewitness. He’s just a boy…”

“She _saved_ him?”

“That’s what he says.”

“We can’t tell Waverly. If she thinks Wynonna can be brought back…”

“She’ll stop at nothing to save her.”

//

The house is smaller than Wynonna remembers. The roof hunkers lower to the ground, sinking a little in the center, shingles curling or missing around a steadily rusting stove pipe.

Wynonna carefully walks her motorbike over the bridge, which creaks ominously. One of the barn doors has come free and bangs periodically in the wind. It’s clearly been open for a while; what’s left of the latch has beaten a dent into the wood. Wynonna leaves her bike inside the barn, leaning a piece of wood against the door to stop it from banging. She doesn’t need another tattoo beating its way into her brain.

Now that she’s here, she stalls.

It had made sense, after she’d rolled back out with the Bandidos. She’d lost count of the times she had seen Waverly, looking up at her like that from under her bed at the homestead. It was Willa that had taught her never to hide there, had dragged her out and yelled at her to run, to get away from Ward while one of them still could.

She’d only been back to the homestead once since the attack. The window she’d thrown her empty whiskey bottle through is still broken, ten years later. This time she’s running dry. She needs to keep her wits about her if she’s going to get to the bottom of it all.

Curtis never gave up on her. Maybe, in this one small instance, she can do the same for him.

The wolf pack is too sprawling. There’s too many of them, and someone’s going to figure out Wynonna’s hunting them down before she gets them all.

When Doc finds out, she’s finished.

If she’s going to make _sure_ she gets revenge for Curtis, she’s got to make sure she gets the right Revenants, and fast, without anyone knowing what she’s trying to do.

Whatever Curtis had been doing when he was here, it definitely wasn’t home improvement.

The front door is warped shut, just as it has been for over a decade. That’s a small mercy. Wynonna isn’t ready to follow Curtis into the house, not yet.

The bad news is that she doesn’t know where else to follow him to.

It’s a poorly kept secret that his body was found on the Earp land, but there’s no helpful police tape marking out the exact spot. Amongst the junk, it’s hard to tell what’s been disturbed and what hasn’t.

Wynonna digs around but finds no answers, to her complete lack of surprise. Stupid, decrepit mess of a place. She should have known she’d find nothing but disappointment here.

Just as she’s about to start tearing the back of the barn apart in frustration, she hears someone else drive to the far side of the bridge.

Just her luck; Doc had someone follow her. There’s no way she’s going to let them get back to report her.

Wynonna comes round the side of the barn, paces silent, and ready to pounce, only to see Waverly marching towards the porch steps.

The sight hits her like a mule kick.

Three years makes more of a difference than she could have imagined. Wynonna had never seen Waverly being that confident, that determined, from her styled hair to her skinny jeans. Waverly even looks taller; or maybe she’s just holding herself straighter, out from under the weight of being watched all the time. Wynonna had always known she was just dragging Waverly down with her.

She’s also never seen her little sister _armed_.

“Wy - Wynonna?”

Waverly slowly moves towards the rifle slung over her back, and Wynonna catches the jerk of her head as Waverly risks a glance back towards her Jeep. It’s not far, not compared to the space between them, but Wynonna knows she could cover it before Waverly could even touch the car door.

“I’m not going to hurt you, Waverly.”

Almost everything about Waverly’s body language says she doesn’t believe that. _Almost_ everything.

Her hold might be weak, but Wynonna’s amazed to find it might just be strong enough.

“What are you doing here?”

“Same thing you are.” Wynonna shrugs, trying to pretend none of this bothers her. “Chasing Curtis’s murderers.”

“You know who killed Uncle Curtis?” Waverly steps forward, her sense of danger overrun by her curiosity.

 _Some things never change_ , Wynonna thinks bitterly. “If I did, you think I’d be digging around this trash dump? Anyway, doesn’t take a genius to figure out it was the Revenants.” And it won’t take a genius to make it right – to take the revenge so Waverly doesn’t have to, and then be gone from her life for good. “I might not be good for much, but I can at least put them down.”

“Yeah, but how do you _know_? How do _I_ know? It might have been the Bandidos. How do you know Doc wasn’t involved? How do I know you… you…”

“You really think –“ Wynonna feels the anger swell, rushing up behind her eyes and driving the point of her teeth into her tongue. _No, she won’t, she **won’t**_. “Doc wouldn’t have done that. Bad for business.”

“Like slaughtering a bus full of people would be good for business.”

“What bus?” Wynonna scowls in confusion at Waverly. Between the accusations and the level of vitriol in Waverly’s voice, Wynonna’s finding it harder and harder to keep her temper even, to keep herself back from the one line she’d always sworn she wouldn’t cross.

“Greyhound 774? They found nine people dead. _Drained_. You’re telling me you don’t – don’t remember?”

“Got no fucking clue what you’re talking about. I – I got to go.”

Wynonna tries not to think about how she’s just running, again. Tries to focus on the fact that she’s leaving to keep Waverly safe, safe from her, as she flies out of the barn on her Speedster and –

Yeah, she’s not even fooling herself any more. She’s running.

//

Wynonna hightails it away from the homestead, from Purgatory, from any kind of civilization.

What a fool she’d been to think she could be around people again. What a selfish asshole she’d been to think she could control herself, to put Waverly at risk.

Up here, deep in the mountains, has become the closest thing she’s had to a home in a long while. Staying there is no solution, she’d learned that the hard way, but every now and then, she needs to stumble to the edge of the rock, to see nothing but the pines and the snow and just feel, far enough away that nobody can hear her scream.

 _What have I become?_ Around her, the peaks loom, and do not answer.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Because my job sometimes takes me away from internet access I cannot promise a set update day, but these should keep coming at you roughly every two weeks. Thank you for your kind comments last chapter, they really make my day.


	3. You keep running like the sky is falling

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly digs deeper into the mysteries she's facing and, in doing so, is forced to revisit some of the more unpleasant parts of her past. 
> 
> This chapter contains non-graphic references to death, trauma, and violence, shown through flashbacks. A high incidence of Smurf swearing.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

>  _I can't see where you're comin' from_  
>  _But I know just what you're runnin' from_  
>  […]  
>  _This ain’t no place for no hero_  
>  _To call home_
> 
> Short Change Hero - The Heavy

The flashes of Waverly she’d seen since she’d arrived had only made Nicole more certain of what she’d known the moment she’d first seen her. She feels the thrill of her approaching almost before Waverly comes round the corner, and there’s no way she could stop the grin spreading over her face, or the eager way her whole body straightens up.

Waverly’s eyes dart back and forth rapidly, as if desperate to land somewhere else before catching on Nicole. The smile that darts over her face is far less than easy, and it’s so obvious that something is tearing her apart, and Nicole just wants to make it all better.

“You look like you’ve seen a ghost,” she hazards instead.

“Something like that,” Waverly mutters.

“You want to talk about it?”

Everything about Waverly’s body seems to say that she’d like nothing better than to accept Nicole’s offer of a sympathetic ear. She leans in towards the desk, almost close enough for Nicole to smell, mouth hanging open slightly with unsaid words Nicole knows she’s going to hang off of like her life depends on it.

“I don’t…” Waverly trails off, and Nicole can’t figure out what’s holding her back.

_Just ask her out, you big, fat chicken._

“Well, I get off shift in about twenty minutes -“

The bang of Nedley’s office door opening interrupts her. “I knew I smelled Shorty’s finest.”

Nedley strides up to the front desk, beaming, and Nicole hurries to hide her embarrassment in the first thing that comes to hand, which happens to be her computer.

“Look, Nedley –“ Waverly starts.

Nedley’s grin vanishes. “I can’t show you that file, Waverly.”

“No, no, this isn’t about that. It’s about the bus. The 774.”

“That was months ago – but I can’t show you that file either. This is a police station.”

Nicole struggles to conceal a snigger, earning her a death glare from the Sheriff. She makes a point of pretending to become deeply absorbed in her emails. Departmental circulars about public affairs. Desperately interesting.

“I just need to know if – that – Wynonna…”

“I guess I could tell you that,” Nedley relents with a sigh. “We actually picked her up that night, on the other side of town.”

“So she _couldn’t_ have been involved?”

“No. Now, if that’s everything –“ Nedley swipes the Styrofoam container from the desk “- it’s past my lunchtime.”

He stomps off back into his office, but, to Nicole’s disappointment, Waverly has rushed out by the time his door clicks shut.

One of these days she’ll actually finish a conversation with that woman.

//

With far more questions lining up for attention in her brain than she started the day with, Waverly goes to the place she truly thinks of as home: the ranch. Gus might not agree with her quest for answers, but she’s always been the person Waverly came to with her problems.

They sit for a while on the porch swing, long enough for Waverly to begin thinking maybe she shouldn’t bring everything up.

But, of course, Gus can tell something’s wrong. Gus always had an uncanny ability to see right through whatever front Waverly was trying to put up. It had been the most frustrating thing in the world when she was a teenager, but now Waverly’s nothing but grateful.

“Alright, kid, out with it. What’s bothering you?”

”I went by the homestead today. I know, I know, I should have, I know you don’t want me to, but – Wynonna was there. She didn’t do anything, Gus, she didn’t so much as – she didn’t do anything, it was almost like – I mean, she was _Wynonna_. My sister. And she knows Curtis’s death wasn’t an accident, and that massacre, on the bus, she wasn’t there, and if she wasn’t there, and if she’s protecting children, and - if she hasn’t been doing all these things, maybe she’s not – what if she’s fighting it?”

“Look, I know you want to help. It’s one of the things that makes you so special. But the little details don’t change the big one: what Wynonna is now,” Gus points out.

“But, what if Uncle Curtis… What if it really wasn’t the Revenants that - that were responsible?”

“I don’t know what happened, and I don’t care to. He’s dead and buried, and no amount of magic can bring him back. I’ve no interest in going looking for any answers, even if I was powerful enough to find them, which I ain’t.”

“But Gus, don’t you see, those answers could change everything. What if it was somebody else, and they do it again? What if Wynonna goes after the Revenants and starts a gang war, and it’s all over this one big mistake?”

Gus sighs. “You’re not going to let this go, are you?”

“No.”

“There is one person that could help you. Somebody with a lot more power than what I’ve got. But she doesn’t like to be disturbed. I’m trying to protect you, d’ya see? You may well not like where this leads. Or the price it costs.”

“I have to try. If there’s a chance - even just a _chance_ \- that Wynonna could - I have to.”

Gus hands her a little folded kerchief, and Waverly cradles the little, carefully folded square of pale blue fabric.

“She’ll need something he had on him when he died.”

Waverly almost drops the handkerchief. “He WHAT?”

“Don’t worry, it’s been cleaned.”

“That’s so disturbing.”

“That’s magic. That’s the world you are asking for.” Gus leans in and grabs Waverly’s hand, tight enough to hurt. “If you go down this road, you have to be willing to follow it through to the end. No matter the cost. If you can’t deal with it, might as well hand that back to me right now.”

Gus holds out her other hand for the handkerchief, but Waverly clutches it closer. “No, I can do this.”

Gus pulls both hands back, suppressed grief in her eyes. “I hope so, baby girl. For all our sakes.”

//

_It had been Shorty who’d told her, three years ago, that her last remaining sister was as good as gone. Normally Nedley would have handled it, but he just couldn’t face it._

_Waverly had fought to hold herself together during the short ride to the ranch, but almost chokes when she sees the ranch, all done up for Wynonna’s birthday._

_Curtis has strung up balloons around the back porch, and laid the outside table with a dark cloth and a bottle of his best whiskey, which sits waiting, next to a cake. Gus might be all spikes on the outside when it comes to Wynonna, but she’s taken delicate care over the lettering, white icing on dark._

_That’s the sight that finally breaks Waverly, and she can’t stop the tears any more._

_“I know it’s not much, but you can’t go far wrong with chocolate.” Gus is drying her hands on a kitchen towel when she walks in from the kitchen, and it takes a second before she sees the tears in Waverly’s eyes and the way she had wrapped her arms around herself. “Baby girl, what’s wrong?”_

_“Wynonna. She’s gone.”_

//

Find the Blacksmith, Gus had told her. Go to the far side of town, beyond the last numbered house on the highway, beyond the asphalt and the graded gravel. Go beyond the posted signs, and be sure to take the Jeep, because the roads get rough out where the Blacksmith lives.

She doesn’t take kindly to intruders.

Take an offering: made, not bought. Go alone. Go for a reason, and take whatever answer she gives you. And, above all, do not outstay your welcome. When the Blacksmith is done with you, you leave, and be grateful you can go.

Waverly hadn’t had a clear vision of what she’d thought she would find, but a huddle of buildings not too different from her own family’s homestead was probably not everything she’d expected from a witch’s house.

She almost pays for her complacency when the metal gate carvings come alive and block her way with a _schwing_ of sharpened metal.

“Hello? Hello? I’m here to see the Blacksmith?”

A figure steps out from one of the outbuildings in a cloud of steam. Waverly can’t see her face, but she’s fairly certain the Blacksmith is glaring at her.

“Gus McCready sent me. About her husband, Curtis?”

The Blacksmith lifts the heavy leather cover from her face, and Waverly is surprised by how young she looks. Far younger than Gus, who made it sound as if the Blacksmith had been around when she was young.

“Curtis was a good man.”

“He was my uncle.”

With a wave of the hand not holding a red-hot poker, the Blacksmith sends the gate carvings back into place, leaving Waverly’s way clear again.

“Leave the pie in the car, I don’t want it. I’ll grant your request for Curtis’s sake.”

Inside the forge is the busy clutter of an ordered, working mind. Waverly can’t help but stare. All the magic she’d done with Gus had involved living things, moving things, with their own internal force. She knew how to shape something that was striving for change, but manipulating metal was beyond anybody she knew.

“I make no promises that you’ll like the answers you find here, Waverly Earp. People rarely do.” The Blacksmith snatches the handkerchief out of Waverly’s hands.

“You – you know who I am?”

“Yes, I know who you are. And I know who your sister is.”

“Do you know something – anything – that could help her?”

“I can’t undo her curse, but that’s not the biggest problem you’re facing.” The Blacksmith flicks the handkerchief out across a table, and smoothes the creases out. “No one is ever truly lost to us. You may not be able to find the path to bring them back, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t there.”

Without bothering to explain her cryptic remarks, the Blacksmith mutters to herself under her breath as she darts around the forge, collecting items seemingly at random and adding them to the growing pile on the handkerchief. A small, green egg is joined by a twist of coarse hair, a horseshoe, and a piece of antler.

_“An riochd iaruinn ‘s an riochd eich,_  
_An riochd nathrach ‘s an riochd féidh;  
‘S treise mi-fhein na gach neach.”_

Waverly can feel the hairs on her arms stand on end with something more than nervousness, deeper than curiosity. This is the most complex magic she’s ever seen, and she wants to run and lean closer at the same time.

Suddenly the pieces on Curtis’s handkerchief jump into the air, balancing on top of each other in a way that couldn’t possibly be making the shape Waverly can see so clearly; a man, aiming a rifle at an unseen target.

Waverly had been driven to this point by a stubborn insistence that it might not have been the Revenants, but hadn’t really believed it to be true. It had been so easy to assume it was the Revenants. So easy to picture lolling tongues and yellowing fangs coming out of the dark.

The spell reveals her heart was wrong. It wasn’t the Revenants; werewolves don’t fight as humans, and don’t use guns to do their killing. Waverly knows that all too well.

//

_It had been Willa who’d seen them first._

_She’d run in from the front room, screaming for Ward. Their father had never been far from a gun, and strides out with a rifle in his hands and Peacemaker slung at his hip._

_Michelle sweeps Waverly up, and she must have been heavy, at six, but her mother lifts her easily. They’re almost to the stairs when one of the front windows smashes and a lean blur of grey lands on the rug, slavering at Willa._

_Ward is firing out another window, struggling to keep the pack at bay. When he swings the barrel round to protect Willa, another wolf springs through the gap he leaves and knocks his shot wild._

_With a roughness Waverly isn’t used to getting from her mother’s hands, she’s deposited on the floor. Michelle touches her fingers to the necklace Waverly will one day wear, and stretches out her other hand._

_The stove doors fly open and a hot log bursts out to knock the wolf off of Ward. As it screams in pain, he pulls Peacemaker from its holster, and shots ring in Waverly’s ears again._

_“Waverly, run!” Michelle screams at her, and Waverly stumbles up the stairs, crawling more than managing to get her feet under her._

_Waverly pounds down the hallway to the only safety she can think of. From under her bed, she listens to the sound of gunfire and growling from downstairs, merging together in her head to a noise that makes no sense._

_A hand grabs one of hers and she screams, but it's Wynonna's. Wynonna slips under the bed next to Waverly and clamps a hand over her mouth._

_"Shut up, stupid."_

_The sounds of fighting have stopped, and they hear a gruff voice downstairs. "I said no one harms the pups!"_

_“She fought back,” another voice answers, and is then silenced with a roar and a heavy, final thump._

_The next voice sounds as scared as Waverly feels. “Boss, what about the others?”_

_"No one harms the pups. Now get out!"_

_Wynonna doesn’t loosen her tight grip all night, and neither of them go downstairs until a young police officer with a sympathetic smile reminds them that his name is Randy, and lets Waverly bury her face in his uniform as he carries her out._

//

Nedley had been very clear that he had no problem with his deputies stopping by Shorty’s for a drink after work, but up until tonight Nicole hadn’t quite felt comfortable enough. After the long, dull shift she’s just had, Nicole wants to nurse a beer with a little background noise before going back to her empty apartment.

She slides onto a stool at the bar and gazes at the Western memorabilia behind it. It’s mostly old placards and advertisement signs, but she gets drawn in by the little inscription under the bell.

_Installed by John Henry Holliday in 1882, after being pardoned of all charges relating to the death of Frank Stilwell._

Nicole’s focusing so intently on the tiny, hard-to-read writing, that she almost jumps off her stool when Waverly pops up in front of her.

“So, Officer, what will it be?”

“Oh, I didn’t know you were working tonight,” Nicole blurts out, then immediately curses herself for being a klutz.

“Yeah, pretty much every night. I was just back at the ranch for the - the funeral, to help Gus out. This is my usual everyday - I have a room above the bar.”

“Oh, cool,” Nicole says, unable to find anything better to say.

She finds herself just grinning at Waverly, feeling as if someone just lifted her brain clean out of her head.

“So... you want something to drink?”

“Drink?” Oh, yeah, that thing you go to bars for. Alcohol. “Yeah, Moosehead. Please.”

Waverly beams at her, as if she’d just said something incredibly witty.

“Coming right up. So, how’s your first - it’s been two weeks?” Nicole nods. “A good two weeks?”

“Quiet. They’re careful what they assign a rookie to until they’re sure I know how to tie my shoes without help.”

Waverly laughs, and Nicole feels her hopes soar. _Down, girl_ , she tells herself. She’s not going to ask out the waitress currently fighting with a full bar. Got to pick a better time.

Forcing herself to not stare while Waverly draws her pint, Nicole decides to look around Shorty’s instead.

At the end, on his own, is a man with the look of having been worked outside, and hard, cured by tobacco and whiskey in a way that makes him look about twenty years older than he probably is. Nobody sits and stays with him, but different people keep drifting by for short chats, or to buy his next drink. They seem to understand what he’s saying, even if Nicole can’t.

“Watching the local wildlife?” Once again Nicole jumps in surprise; Waverly had placed her glass down on the bar without Nicole noticing.

This time it’s Waverly who’s grinning, apparently entertained by Nicole’s absorption. Nicole momentarily freezes, then relaxes again. At least it wasn’t Waverly she was caught staring at.

“Yeah, I like to people watch. It’s kind of a hazard of the job.”

“Well, there’s plenty to watch around here.” Waverly leans forward, arms folded on the bar, as if she’s about to impart deep secrets. Nicole can’t help but be drawn in. “See the guy on the other side of the couches, there? That’s Max Wheelson. Took off to the oil fields up north before he even left high school. Came back six years later with just the one eye. Won’t tell anybody how it happened, and he’s not worked a single day since. Just comes in and drinks.”

“You get a lot of folks going out to the oilfields?”

“No, he’s the only one. Guys ‘round here don’t like to stir their stumps, even for oil money. Mmmm...who else... Oh, Rick. He owns that gas station down near the bridge, the one that’s barely ever open, and still has the old-style pumps? Almost everyone goes to that new place up near the highway, but he still goes and sits in that shop, every day.”

“Wow,” says Nicole, without sarcasm; she’s genuinely impressed. “Observation skills like yours, the Sheriff should have recruited you instead of me.”

“Oh, it’s not -“ Waverly pulls back, and Nicole immediately regrets flustering her. The compliment must have been too much, too quickly. “There’s nothing impressive about it, it’s just - I’ve lived here all my life, it’s a small town, everybody knows everybody else. We don’t get a lot of turnover…“ Waverly trails off, and Nicole feels a sense of fear rise as she watches that face - that wonderful, lively face - shift into a mischievous grin. “Which makes you something of a special event.”

Upgrade that sense of fear to a definite panic mode. When Waverly leans in again, Nicole doesn’t get that conspiratorial thrill. She knows what’s coming, and she’d really hoped to leave this for later. Much later. Maybe even never.

“So, tell me all about yourself. Where did you grow up? Did you live in a city? What did your folks do?”

Nicole hates to disappoint the eager shine in Waverly’s face, but these are all the questions she really doesn’t want to answer. Her life story isn’t exactly straightforward. Definitely not _flirting at a bar_ material.

“Oh...” Nicole blithers.

Fortunately, she’s rescued by Shorty, who choses that moment to burst in, insisting other customers need attention. With a regretful smile and little wave that disengages Nicole’s brain all over again, Waverly gets back to work.

Nicole only realizes she was staring when she looks away and meets Shorty’s inscrutable gaze. She hides in her beer, worried he’s going to be mad at her.

“Hope she wasn’t bothering you, Officer. Talk the hind legs off a donkey, that one.”

“Oh, no, no bother, no bother at all...” Nicole rushes into the first words, then realizes how over-effusive she’s being. “She’s - uh - nice. It was nice talking to her.”

“Mmph. She’s definitely that. Nicest person in this town.”

Nicole privately agrees, but just takes a pull of her beer instead of digging herself into any deeper holes.

“Nedley treating you alright?” Shorty asks abruptly.

“Oh, yeah, great. I’m learning a lot.”

“Good. Well, I’ll leave you to your drink.”

Nicole plays with the edge of her glass while she considers. That’s the second person who’s asked about the Sheriff since she’s walked in the bar. Throw in the daily barrage of questions when she gets her morning coffee, and it begins to look like there’s a big red arrow pointing at her head.

Well, sure, he hasn’t sent her out on anything too hairy, but she’s still new. It’s not strange for him to be keeping her close, making sure she doesn’t get herself into trouble.

Unless... that’s not how he usually does things.

If the Sheriff’s not normally so involved with his rookies, then of course the attention he’s giving her would ruffle a few feathers. Every other officer in the department is local, born and bred. He came _looking_ for Nicole. He deliberately picked a city-trained officer. He must have a reason; if only she could figure out what it was.

A laugh knocks her out of her reverie, and the sound draws her eyes. Of course... Waverly.

She’s chatting to a group of boys - buff, rough, and in their early twenties - never so far from their mothers’ skirts. Waverly manages them masterfully, smile wide and friendly, as if they were the most interesting people at the bar, but staying one step ahead of their hands.

Staying much further away than she had when she was talking to Nicole.

When she leaves the boys, Waverly stops by and checks on the solo drinker at the end of the bar. She couldn’t have said more than a few words to him, but Nicole watches his weathered face crack in his first and only smile of the night.

_Nice_ , Shorty had said. Well, she’s definitely that. Nice to everybody, that’s all, in a way that could easily be mistaken for flirting.

Except for that small voice inside Nicole that insists she’s not mistaken, and the smile of encouragement Waverly flashes at her from across the room

Nicole leaves her money on the bar and heads out, Waverly’s smile warming her all the way home.

//

“Still working in this dump, huh?”

Waverly whips around, fingers tightening around the broom handle. Wynonna is leaning against the wall just inside the back door, pretending to inspect her fingernails. Even though the bar is near enough silent after closing, Waverly clearly never even heard the door open.

“Better than running drugs and guns for the Bandidos.”

Wynonna purses her lips, and nods slowly. A cheap shot, but she can take the hit. “Fair enough.”

Shorty comes through with an empty bussing tray, which he promptly drops when he sees Wynonna. “What are you doing here?”

“I asked her, Shorty. It’s okay.”

“Some warning would have been nice,” Shorty grumbles as he retrieves his tray. “I’ll be in the back. Holler if you need anything.”

With a final warning glance at Wynonna, Shorty bangs his way back through the door. Waverly perches on a bar stool, but Wynonna stays against the wall, keeping as far back as possible.

“We best make this quick,” Wynonna says. “I gotta be back for sunrise or Doc will start getting suspicious twitches in his moustache.”

“What were you doing at the homestead?”

“Like I told you, I’ve been trying to find out what happened to Curtis. Which Revenants attacked him.”

“Why?”

_Holy hot cheeseballs,_ Wynonna thinks. _It’s going to take more than the twenty minutes she’s got to unpack that mess of worms. Guess we’re going for the cliff notes version._

“You remember when I - when I went. Right after Chrissy’s mom....”

Waverly nods, a gentle bobbing of the head.

“I thought it would help. I knew I – I can’t do the magic stuff, not like you can. I thought it would be a way to make me strong, that I could deal with it, handle it. I didn’t know, I couldn’t… I went wrong, Waves. I went so, so wrong. I did shit – and by the time I could think again, there was no going back. I couldn’t be around people. I _shouldn’t_ be around people. I was trying to get everything under control, but none of it worked, not for long.

“Until I found something that could, I dunno, chase out the hunger. Revenge. So that’s what I’m going to do. I’m going to put down every last dog that ever hurt my family.”

Wynonna finally steps up to the bar to grab an empty glass, just to have something to hold, but there’s a whiskey bottle sitting next to it so she pours herself a sloppy shot and throws it down her throat. She can’t look at Waverly. She knows what her reply is going to be.

Wynonna’s guess is way off.

“It wasn’t the Revenants that killed Uncle Curtis,” Waverly says, instead of the condemnation Wynonna’s expecting. “I don’t know who did, but if we work together, maybe we have a chance of finding out.”

“I - I’ve killed, Waverly. You’ve gotta understand that, you’ve gotta know what you might be getting into. ‘Cause if we do this, it’s you and me, baby girl, there ain’t nobody else left.”

Waverly stares across the gaping space between them, and Wynonna knows she doesn’t see the monster. She can just imagine that her over-empathetic sister sees exactly how she feels. So very alone, and so very fragile.

Shorty stomps back into the bar before Waverly can make the mistake of reaching out for Wynonna.

“Can’t say it’s the best idea you two have ever had, and Nedley sure won’t like it, but I guess there’s no talking you out of it now. Maybe you can come ‘round some of Curtis’s old rounds with me, see what we can find.”

“Why are you – why would you do that?” Wynonna stares at Shorty, suspicious of someone who wants to help. It’s not a motivation she’s seen any time recently.

Shorty shrugs. “If you’re not going to listen to my advice, the least you can do is let me help.” He reaches under the bar and slides a revolver along the top towards Wynonna. “That’s what Curtis was on your land for. Whoever killed him obviously had no clue what it was, or they wouldn’t have left it.”

Wynonna gapes at it. “ _Peacemaker_?”

She reaches out a hand for the revolver but stops short, hovering a couple of inches over the worn grip. “I threw it away. It – it doesn’t work.”

“Maybe. Maybe not. But you’re back now, and it’s yours, ready or not.”

Wynonna lays her hand on the gun she hasn’t touched in three years, and hears the ghosts of her failures scream in the depths of her head. “I’m ready.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The Blacksmith’s roots are Scottish in this AU, as opposed to the show’s German. The spell is in the Gaelic, and I’ve taken just a small portion of a Charm to Obtain Justice, as the whole thing is 22 lines long. The section in this fic translates as:
> 
> _In the likeness of iron; in the likeness of the horse;_  
>  _In the likeness of the serpent; in the likeness of the deer;_  
>  _Stronger am I than each one._


	4. The walls that you keep building

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everybody faces their own variety of growing pains, trying to keep up with rapidly shifting alliances and new relationships. AKA: everyone hates you, Wynonna. 
> 
> Content warning: adorable things. ~~Don’t get used to it.~~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _I'm only human after all_   
>  _Don't put your blame on me_
> 
> Human – Rag’n’Bone Man

“No. No. _No_. What kind of ridiculous stunt do you think you’re pulling, bringing her in here?”

“We can help, Sheriff,” Waverly insists, moving to block Nedley from retreating to his office, where he’d clearly much rather be.

“ _Help?_ I have an eyewitness that places her at the scene of an open kidnapping! I should be arresting her, not listening to you suggest I take her on as an informant!”

“Let it go, Waverly, I told you this was never going to work,” Wynonna says. Spending the day in the basement of Shorty’s hadn’t done anything to improve her mood. “Don’t bother shifting that Molson muscle, Nedley, I’m leaving.”

“Wynonna!” Waverly lunges for her, but Wynonna’s already striding out the door. Waverly spins back to give Nedley one last imploring look, before she has to chase after Wynonna.

Somehow, Wynonna has managed to get herself into an argument with yet another police officer in the possibly ten seconds it took Waverly to catch her up. Only this officer isn’t the familiar, permanently tired Nedley.

It’s Nicole. _Fudge nuggets._

“Look, you overgrown carrot stick, I don’t have to explain anything to you.”

“So you think felony assault and kidnapping just don’t apply to you, is that it?”

Wynonna’s spitting, tensed and ready to send Nicole flying towards the nearest brick wall, and Nicole clearly has no idea of the true danger she’s in. It would be refreshing to see someone treating Wynonna like she’s no more threat than the average human, if it wasn’t for the fact that she _isn’t._

“Okay!” Waverly jumps in between them, before the fists start flying and Nicole attempts to arrest an angry vampire. “Nicole – uh, _Officer Haught_ , we were just in the station, talking to Sheriff Nedley, okay? Wynonna’s uh – cooperating in the investigation? And, uh, Wynonna –“

“Yeah, screw it, I’ll be in the car.” Wynonna leaves Waverly alone with a still fairly keyed up Nicole, who doesn’t look entirely convinced that she shouldn’t still try to bring Wynonna in.

Fortunately, she seems even more focused on the anxiety currently twanging across Waverly’s face. “Waverly, is everything –“

“Fine! Fine. No one ever said family was easy,” Waverly says in a falsely cheery tone backed up by a forced smile. She doesn’t think Nicole buys it, for even a second, but sometimes a thin veneer is all you need to get out.

“Okay, but if you need anything. Any time.”

“Thank you. That’s – that’s really sweet.”

“I mean it.”

Almost as if of its own accord, Waverly’s hand reaches out for Nicole just as she turns away. Her fingers barely flutter against the sleeve of Nicole’s shirt, and then she’s out of reach.

Wynonna’s marching off in the opposite direction to where the Jeep is parked, and Waverly has to rush to catch up. In her hurry to make sure she’s not letting an angry vampire storm around town unsupervised, Waverly has no time to see if Nicole felt her touch or not.

//

There’s another officer on his way out as Nicole walks in. He nods at her; politely enough, but she feels a definite chill. Probably just because she’s new in a small town, she keeps telling herself. That’s all.

Nicole heads into the bullpen, where Chambers is already hunched over his paperwork. He gives her the same nod of acknowledgement, and Nicole feels her stomach do that same sinking twist, and repeats her little mantra.

It’s just because she’s new.

At her desk, Nicole pulls the stack of paperwork towards herself, slips one of the pens out of their place in her breast pocket, and stares at the empty boxes on the form. After a few minutes, she notices she’s tapping the pen against her desk and hasn’t written a single thing. Seems like she’s far more bothered by her run-in with Wynonna than she wanted to admit.

With a determined set to her jaw, Nicole slides her chair away from her desk so she can look Chambers in the face. He does not look pleased about the interruption.

“So, what do you know about Wynonna?” she asks outright. Hell, beating about the bush is just going to try what little patience he clearly doesn’t have left.

“She’s bad news,” he replies, helpfully, and stares pointedly at his computer.

“Yeah, I know, but then why doesn’t the Sheriff ever bring her in? I had a look at her file – there’s not a single arrest on her record, not even a speeding ticket. It’s like it’s been scrubbed clean. That doesn’t seem strange to you?”

“Stick to your pay grade, Haught.”

 _Brick wall, meet head_ , Nicole thinks gloomily.

Then Chrissy comes into the bullpen, and Nicole scoots her chair back into place against her desk so fast she bangs her knee. Hard.

Mentally cursing the pain to a back corner of her brain, Nicole manages to work her face into a smile.

“Hey, Chrissy. The Sheriff just stepped out.”

“That’s okay, I’ll wait. Anyway, he’s not the only one I came in for.” Chrissy plonks a cup down on Nicole’s desk and grins triumphantly at her.

Slightly confused as to why Chrissy looks so pleased over a cup of coffee, Nicole leans forward and cracks the lid. The characteristic double ‘D’s are scrawled across the top, and underneath is a layer of whipped cream, sprinkled with chocolate. The little extra touch she gets when it’s not one of the guys ordering for her.

“You remembered,” Nicole murmurs.

“Of course I did,” Chrissy says. “Someone’s got to look out for the rookie.” She slaps away Chambers’s hand when he makes a grab for one of the remaining cups. “None of these are for you! You’re old enough and ugly enough to get your own coffee.”

“Don’t like any of that fancy crap anyway,” he grumbles, and heads out the door.

Chrissy settles into a comfortable lean against the main desk, and regards Nicole over the rim of her own drink. “They still giving you a hard time?”

“No. I’m just new, it’s going to take them a little time to get to know me. That’s all.”

The way Chrissy looks at her makes Nicole think she can read all of the doubts swirling under her braid.

“Maybe they don’t think an officer as promising as you should get stuck in a backwater town like this. Why aren’t you off chasing the big crimes in the city?”

“You know why. Your father recruited me.” Nicole lifts her cup and hides her face in a small, but oh, so wonderful mouthful of creamy goodness, instead of facing the pointed expression Chrissy is drilling into her skull.

“My dad is not worth you wasting your life here. Trust me.”

As if summoned, Nedley chooses that moment to walk through the door. Beaming, Chrissy picks up the tray, and its two remaining cups, and follows Nedley into his office.

Nicole hears Nedley hissing something in a low tone to Chrissy, whose response is far clearer.

“What, you mean you haven’t told her yet?”

When Nedley clicks the door shut, blocking off any further eavesdropping, Nicole wonders to herself what she hasn’t been told.

Judging by everything that’s happened since she arrived; a hell of a lot.

//

“You sure you want to come along?” Wynonna asks.

“Yes. I’m not letting you out of my sight tonight.” Waverly doesn’t say why. The space between them is still too raw for that much honesty. “Now, saddle up.”

Wynonna takes the belt that Waverly shoves at her, but doesn’t move to buckle it around her waist. She just lets the revolver sit on her lap as Shorty drives them out of town, to a small steading where a single cow stares at them over a rickety wooden fence, chewing its dinner for the second time.

Shorty hops out of the truck, and has led them halfway across the yard when two men come out onto the porch. Waverly recognizes Tim: he’s small and nervous, for an orc, and hides his bald patch under a baseball cap. The second man is larger, made even more so by the bulky fur coat he’s wearing.

Shorty throws out an arm to stop Wynonna in her tracks. “What are you doing here, Del Ray?”

Bobo grins and lays a hand on Tim’s shoulder. “You come around, having your little chats. Well, I have mine.”

There’s a strange sensation, tickling the back of Waverly’s skull, trying to tell her that she’s seen him before.

“There’s a world of difference between threatening someone and talking to them.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’ll be sure to see no harm comes to Tim here.”

Wait, no, not seen. Heard.

That gruff voice had been there that night at the homestead. _I said no one harms the pups._

_That shit-ticket._

Waverly’s grabbed her shotgun off the back seat, and stormed by both Wynonna and Shorty before their stunned faces really register that _the good sister _is brandishing her 12-gauge with full intent.__

____

____

Tim dives for the floor, but Bobo just rubs his jaw in deliberation. “Well, well, and I thought Wynonna would be the feisty one.”

“How dare you,” Waverly gets out, her voice trembling with anger.

“Waverly!” Shorty barks. “Put that gun down. Remember why we’re here.”

The words take a second to really connect, drifting through Waverly’s resisting mind until they hit one particular word. Wynonna. Waverly can’t lose control, can’t start shouting about the attack on the homestead with Wynonna standing mere feet behind her, on a short fuse.

“What’s going on?” Wynonna demands.

“Nothing.” Waverly reluctantly lowers her shotgun. “I thought he was someone – I was wrong.”

Waverly surrenders the shotgun to Shorty, who gives her a short nod, relief on his face.

“Always a pleasure,” Bobo crows as they retreat back to Shorty’s truck.

//

Wynonna groans. _Why did this have to be their last stop?_

“Why are we coming to see the Yorks?”

“Their family runs the Wildcat Hills Extraction Plant,” Shorty says. “They’ve got money, and connections outside the Triangle. I’m sure you can put two and two together.”

“Putting two and two together is kinda the problem here,” Wynonna mutters.

“Oh, yeah,” Waverly trills, leaning forward from the back seat. “You dated Pete for a while. He was really sweet on you.”

“He was sweet, alright.”

“Wynonna.” Waverly’s voice drops to a warning tone. “What did you do?”

“I kind of sort of slept with his brother. At his birthday party.”

“Wynonna!”

When they arrive, though, Wynonna senses there’s a problem here beyond her and her chaotic past. She smells the ripe, sweaty odor of fear coming off the York boys as soon as she gets out of the truck. They’re ready with a barrage of complaints about Wynonna being on their land, just like every other person they’d seen that night.

Wynonna won’t waste breath denying any of it, but she’s got lots of practice pretending like she doesn’t care. She’s also got lots of practice sniffing out liars, and the York boys are cooking up a stinker.

“What are you hiding?” Wynonna demands, speaking over their conversation.

Pete tries to mask his nervousness with a disdainful sneer, but his fists clench at his sides. “The fuck you talking about?”

Wynonna goes to take a threatening step towards him, but Shorty lays a restraining hand on her shoulder. “Now, Wynonna, no need to go flinging around accusations.”

“If they’ve got nothing to hide, they won’t mind us taking a look around, will they?”

“Well?” Shorty asks Pete, and gets a fist in the face for his trouble.

Wynonna remembers Kyle always being quick to undress, but he could have won a medal for the speed which with he was out of his clothes, and bounding on four legs towards Wynonna.

 _Fucking coyotes_ , she thinks right before he hits, knocking her to the ground.

Kyle doesn’t just fight with his teeth, he’s slamming his front paws into her ribs to keep her down and stunned, ripping into her skin with his claws, and it’s all Wynonna can do for now to get her arms up to protect her face. She can’t see Shorty, which isn’t good, but out of the corner of her eye she sees Waverly raise one arm, trembling with concentration.

Whatever Waverly had intended to do, it backfires. Literally.

Behind her, Shorty’s truck bursts into flame.

Waverly screams, and Wynonna looks up into twenty kilograms of temporarily distracted fur and fangs and thinks, _Fuck this. I got my own weapons._

Her snarl drowns out Kyle’s, and her fingers tighten in his ruff so he can’t run, he can’t pull back, he can’t escape, he can only whimper as Wynonna pulls his throat down towards her waiting mouth.

Just as she’s about to bite down, her prey is swept out of reach.

Shorty’s paw sends Kyle flying seven metres away to hit a fence and fall back to the ground, human and bruised, but alive.

Wynonna springs to her feet in a rage, hungry to keep fighting, but Shorty just pushes her back over again. It takes a couple more bashes to the head to bring Wynonna to her senses, but eventually the message gets through her skull and she stays on her butt, vision swimming.

_Yeah, yeah, don’t poke the bear._

Waverly comes over, mercifully unscathed, with Shorty’s jeans in one hand and the other pressing her cell to her ear.

“Nedley says he’ll be here in ten minutes.”

It’s more like fifteen, but at least he brings the fire brigade. A search of the property turns up some of the missing guns, stacked in an outbuilding, and even Nedley grudgingly admits Wynonna did a good job.

To Wynonna’s surprise, he goes so far as to call in Nicole to give Waverly and Wynonna a ride home.

“See, Officer?” Wynonna grins unsteadily at Nicole when she arrives, and waves the arm not using Waverly as a support pole in the vague direction of the men they’ve just arrested. “Score one for the good guys.”

Nicole doesn’t look completely convinced, but takes Wynonna’s other arm to help her over to her squad car. _Little victories._

“They were smuggling guns for Bobo,” Waverly says.

Nicole’s eyebrows almost disappear under her Stetson. “Bobo? The gang leader’s name is Bobo?”

“Yeah,” Waverly admits. “I just heard that from your point of view, and – god, one of our gang leaders sounds like a clown.”

“I don’t know, clowns can be pretty scary. I was watching this horror documentary last night, catching up on some paperwork, and there was this one guy...” Nicole shudders.

“You put on horror documentaries while you do your paperwork?”

“Oh, no, I just - any documentary, y'know, I don’t really pay attention to them, they’re just for company. I mean, any company is good when you live odd hours alone. I haven’t gotten used to being without roommates, or an animal.”

“Plenty of animals in this town –“ Wynonna starts, but a swift elbow to the side from Waverly cuts off the rest of the sentence. _Rude. That’s a quality joke._

“We still haven’t found a home for big ginger,” Waverly says, in what sounds to Wynonna like a step up from her usual level of cheerfulness, exacerbated by the headache from the number of times Shorty hit her. “Maybe you should come ‘round the ranch again, see what you think of her?”

“I’d like that.”

“Just peachy,” Wynonna interrupts, wishing for once that Waverly didn’t feel the need to be nice to _everyone_. Especially with dawn approaching. “If you’re done talking about fucking cats, can we go home now?”

//

Gus won’t let Wynonna in the house. Apparently the old barn will do for her, along with a pile of blankets Gus brings out, once she persuades Waverly inside.

“Thanks,” Wynonna says as she takes them.

She hadn’t expected bunting and a fatted calf, but there’s something so very Midwest in the gesture of the blankets Gus knows she doesn’t need. Grudging hospitality aside, Wynonna wants to get out from under those accusing eyes as quickly as she can.

“Don’t expect you’ll be staying long.”

Unfortunately for both of them, it seems Wynonna’s going to be sticking around a lot longer than she’d been planning a couple of days ago. If she has to try and at least exist in this world, it’s going to mean facing far worse.

“Gus – I’m so sorry –“

“Don’t. Just – don’t, Wynonna. I don’t think I could stand it. I raised you. I loved you. Hell, fool that I am, I love you still. I tried my best to help you, but whatever's broken inside you is beyond me. You've got to deal with that on your own, but God help you if you drag Waverly into it. She deserves a chance.”

“I'm not dragging her into anything. It's here, Gus, it's come for us, and hiding our heads in the sand and pretending everything's fine isn't gonna make it go away. Waverly made this choice for herself.”

“Why couldn’t you just leave well enough alone?”

Gus, who’d always seemed to Wynonna as if she had more stubborn strength in her little pinky than the beefiest farm hands in the county, suddenly looks completely wrung out. Just so very done.

Wynonna has no idea what to say, not in the face of every reason she’d given herself to never come back. Now she’s here, and she has a reason to stay, a way she keeps telling herself she can help, but everything in her body and the door shut in her face screams at her to leave.

//

Nicole’s shift ends after the sun has risen, and it’s beginning to feel a little more like normal to be heading home with the last vestiges of dawn still hanging on the coattails of the clouds. Her first few night shifts had left her bleary and a little disoriented, unable to grab more than a few hours of fitful sleep in the afternoon. Now, she’s proud of the way she can stride out to her car, brightly greeting people on their way to work, instead of stumbling along, bleary-eyed.

Today, she even has the energy to stop by the McCready Ranch. There’s an old carrier Sheriff Nedley insisted she borrow from Animal Control sitting on her back seat, next to the oddment of supplies she’d been able to grab from the little Safeway in Purgatory. The cat’s going to have a roasting tin for a litter tray until she can next get into Cochrane, but it’ll do for now.

She eases her patrol car up the drive, careful of the frozen puddles filling the potholes in the gravel. By the time she’s double-checked the position of her hat and the sharpness of her collar in the rearview mirror and slid out of the car, Gus has appeared on the porch.

“Officer Haught. Didn’t expect to see you back so quickly. I know you’ll have questions, but can’t they wait ‘til tomorrow? Waverly’s had a long night.”

Nicole swallows, the sound seeming too loud in her ears, and slips the Stetson off her head. “I’m not here on official business, ma’am. Waverly mentioned you had a cat in need of a new home?”

“She does get these strange fancies.” Gus gives her a searching look, and Nicole hopes she’s not blushing under the implication that Gus is referring to more than the cat.

Regardless, Gus does smile at Nicole before she pops her head back in the door and yells for Waverly, who comes thumping down the stairs, two at a time, to arrive on the porch with all the enthusiasm of a miniature wrecking ball, slightly out of breath.

“Careful, girl, you’ll break your neck one of these days,” Gus admonishes.

“Sorry, Gus. Hi, Nicole. Officer Haught.”

“Nicole’s fine.”

The nervous smile on Waverly’s face at such an innocent invitation makes Nicole’s heart soar straight through her chest, and her fingers tighten around her hat brim. There’s such a beautiful, shining hope in Waverly’s eyes, and Nicole knows she’s never seen anyone more like an angel in her life.

“You want a hand catching that cat?” Gus says, a touch louder than necessary.

“What?” Waverly blinks at her, lightly stunned. “Oh, no, she’s no bother. You’ve got a carrier?”

Nicole nods. “In the car.”

“Well, then, you don’t need me.” Gus gives Waverly’s shoulder a squeeze before disappearing inside the house, leaving them alone on the porch. Nicole resists the urge to scuff her feet against the wood.

It turns out that Waverly’s right: the cat is no bother to catch. She comes trotting right over to them and allows herself to be poured into the crate with surprisingly little fuss. Nicole finds herself feeling oddly disappointed. It’s all over too soon, and she doesn’t want to leave yet.

But she can leave Waverly with something to remember her by.

In her pocket, ready for just this moment, is one of her business cards. Departmental standard, but there would be something off about fishing into her belt to give one to Waverly. This needs to come from somewhere less formal, somewhere more personal.

When Nicole hands it over their fingers meet, just for a second. “In case you want to talk about… the cat.”

Waverly doesn’t slip the card into her pocket, and Nicole could spend forever watching the way Waverly’s thumb brushes the printed letters of her name. “Thanks. That’d be… nice.”

Nicole replaces her hat and tweaks the brim. _Always leave them wanting more_ , her dad had told her.

But it’s Waverly that leaves her wanting, and watching, as she bounces back up the porch steps and into the house.

//

Nicole’s just put the cat in her car when she sees a figure in the barn beyond. Wynonna wobbles into view before Nicole gets suspicious enough to reach for her sidearm, slumping against the door frame, just inside the shadow of the barn. She’s also bare-armed, despite the chill of early winter. Nicole thinks, not for the first time, that Wynonna’s really weird.

“Rescuing little lost kittens now. Could you be any more perfect?” she snarks at Nicole.

“Are you alright, Wynonna? Because you seem a little…” _Drunk? Fucked up?_ Nicole struggles to find a word that fits without being insulting. “Upset?”

“Get that rookie a medal,” Wynonna toasts her, and drinks deep. “Keen eyes like that, you’ll be running this town in no time.”

Nicole takes a closer look at Wynonna, who seems slightly shrunken, hunched over her whiskey bottle. She doesn’t look like the dangerous bar-fighter, the rebel ready to punch out a police officer right outside the station.

She strikes Nicole as nothing more than lost.

To her surprise, she hears Nedley’s voice in her head. _Most of the folks you’ll meet in this job, you’ll meet at their worst. Nine times out of ten, they’re not bad, not really. Just lost. Some so lost, they’ll never find their way back. But there’s some that want to be found, deep down, and you’ll learn to see the difference, in time. Then you just gotta figure out how to help them find their way again._

“You did some good today,” Nicole offers.

Wynonna scoffs, but in reflex: there’s no more rage behind it. “Yeah, I’m a real fucking hero. Don’t lay that kinda blame at my feet.”

“No, really. You did good. You got those guns off the street, and that will save lives. You can be proud of that.”

Wynonna stares at her. It’s clear to Nicole she’s trying to find the lie, scrutinizing her face for the hidden motive, and all Nicole can wonder is who destroyed Wynonna’s trust so damn deeply. For a moment, it looks as if Wynonna considers believing Nicole’s words, but then her eyes harden again.

“Best get home, donut patrol. We’ve got some long nights ahead of us.”

//

Nicole brings the cat in first and leaves her in her cage, tucked into a quiet kitchen corner, while she ferries in the rest of the supplies. She’s never had a cat before, but a half hour with the best that Google had to offer teaches her enough to set up a litter tray, food, and water in front of the cage before opening the little door and stepping back to give the cat some room.

While she waits for the cat to decide whether she wants to come out or not, Nicole sets about her evening routine. She flings her hat onto the stand just inside the door, and pumps her fist triumphantly when it catches the hook. She eases off her shoes and leaves them in the center of the hallway, to remind her to polish them after she’s had supper.

Supper is a pasta alfredo ready meal, beeping away to itself in the microwave. The microwave itself takes a few thumps to get working: Nicole’s fairly sure it’s as old as she is. Most of the stuff in the apartment has that decade-plus look to it. 

The place had come already furnished: every rental place in Purgatory did, apparently. When she’d asked, the landlady had given her a strange look, as if buying furniture was a frivolous modern habit she disapproved of. Nicole didn’t have anything with her, and wasn’t going to go wasting money, but she would have liked to decorate herself. The apartment has a strange feel about it, as if it’s not really hers, even after living there for almost two months.

Nicole’s phone lights up, on the table where she’d left it. A text, from a number she doesn’t recognize.

_Hey, it’s Waverly. Thank you for taking big ginger. Hope she gets on well in her new home! Let me know what you name her ;)_

Not bothering to suppress her grin, Nicole slides into the kitchen on her socks and strikes the Rocky pose, outstretched fist still clutching her phone. The cat’s head abruptly disappears back inside the cage, but it was worth it.

_Operation Business Card: successful._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in Research Is Fun: microwaves are way older than I thought they were. The patent was filed in 1945, the first home model was rolled out in 1967, and by 1990, the year before the smoothest police officer ever was born, 68% of Canadian homes had a microwave. The more you know!
> 
> Today in readers are awesome: thank you to everyone who's checking in to this little weirdness of mine, and huge hugs for the feedback!


	5. The highway of the damned

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is a longer, more action-packed chapter. Waverly does a lot of sleuthing, and finds some disturbing answers. Wynonna keeps fighting, and might actually be getting somewhere. Nicole is a Good Cop.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hugest of thanks to the Smurf, who has saved me from beating my head in against the desk, and always has the best songs for every occasion.
> 
> _There is no peace here, war is never cheap dear_   
>  _Love will never meet here, it just gets sold for parts_
> 
> Beat the Devil’s Tattoo – Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

It’s not often Waverly gets to sit down in Shorty’s, enjoying her own drink, talking to her own friend, and watching someone else bustle around the tables in her place. It feels odd: she has to keep quelling the urge to get up and help, but the new waitress seems to have everything under control.

“What’s her name again?” Chrissy asks. “Rosie, Rosanna…?”

“Rosita. Shorty says I can cut back on my shifts now, if I want, and have the time to take some more courses.”

“Why do you do all that, Waves? Take all those correspondence courses, learn far-away languages. I mean, it’s not as if you’re ever going to be able to leave the Triangle and visit any of these places.”

“No, but learning about them makes it feel as if I could.”

Waverly finds her eyes gravitating towards the door. Nicole has only been back to Shorty’s once during Waverly’s shifts, and she finds herself hoping for the moment Nicole walks back through those doors again. These thoughts about Nicole had slid gently into her brain as if they’d always been there, like a place she didn’t know she was heading to – didn’t even know existed – and had suddenly arrived at, and immediately known it was where she was supposed to be.

“You okay, Waves?” Chrissy waves a hand vigorously to regain her attention. “You seem a bit… elsewhere.”

“Oh, yeah, yeah. I’m fine.”

“You don’t have to be, you know. It’s perfectly understandable, with everything that’s going on, after Curtis, and now Wynonna –“

“I don’t want to talk about that.” Waverly lays her hand on Chrissy’s, partly in apology for the interruption, partly to knock Chrissy into a different topic. “I want to hear all about your date with Perry.”

//

Later, when Shorty summons Waverly into the back room, she’s confused to see Nedley sitting at the table.

“Main room too busy for you, Sheriff?”

“That’s not what I’m here for. Have a seat.”

Waverly does, glancing back between Shorty and Nedley. Their perfectly matching serious expressions unnerve her, and she braces for bad news. It can’t be Gus, or they wouldn’t be so calm. Nor Wynonna: they wouldn’t be so grave.

Nedley slides a box towards her across the table. It looks vaguely familiar: Waverly’s almost certain it’s the box she saw Nicole leaving with, the day of Curtis’s funeral.

“What’s this?” Waverly leans forward and opens the lid slowly.

She almost falls off her chair when she sees what’s inside.

The rounded top of a skull is the only thing visible through the sawdust it’s packed in, but fake bone doesn’t get that uneven patina of age.

“What – who – whose was this?“ Waverly’s thumping heart steadies. She’s seen skeletons and bodies before, but having one sprung on her unexpectedly goes straight to her adrenal gland.

“We don’t know,” Shorty says. “It’s a kind of heirloom. Been passed down through the Sleuth since Wyatt’s day. All we know is it’s important, and we have to protect it.”

“Curtis left it behind,” Nedley says. “He – he wanted you to have it.”

“Why?”

Shorty shrugs. “Don’t know that either. Curtis had some strange ideas. But he must’ve had a reason.”

//

Waverly stares across the boundary fence to the Blacksmith’s house, even more nervous than she had been last time she’d come. She shifts the box containing the skull from one hip to the other for the fourth time, and glances at the gate again. There’s a crow sitting on the gatepost, staring at her with one black eye. She tries to ignore it.

Waverly’s going to have to step forward eventually. Just not right this second…

“Back already?” The voice comes from behind her, and Waverly practically leaps out of her skin. She hadn’t heard the Blacksmith come up behind her, despite the fact that she’s laden with a pack, rifle, and three hares slung over one shoulder. “You Earps are harder to get rid of than a lice infestation. What do you want?”

Heart still thumping somewhere in the lower half of her throat, Waverly shows her the skull.

The Blacksmith recoils, dropping the hares to get both hands on her rifle. “Get back in your car and take those cursed bones far away from here!”

“You know what it is?” Waverly clutches the box closer. The Blacksmith might be armed, but she’s pointing her rifle at the ground, not at Waverly, and her stance is fearful rather than angry. “I promise, I’ll take it away, but I have to know what it is. I have to know what’s coming. I need answers. _Please_.”

//

Waverly drives back up the gravel road, following the terse directions the Blacksmith throws at her. She insisted on moving the skull to the back of Waverly’s Jeep, stuffed under a blanket and as far away from the passenger seat as possible, but even that doesn’t make her comfortable.

She refuses to answer any of Waverly’s questions with anything else other than, “You’ll see when we get there.”

Seeing is exactly what Waverly’s afraid of: the Blacksmith is directing her towards the Earp homestead, and a week seems far too soon to be going back down that road. Then the Blacksmith tells her to keep driving, right past the turn to the homestead, and down a road Waverly’s never driven.

“But – I thought our house was the last on this road. This is just an access road for the Park Rangers – right?”

“Didn’t you ever think it strange that the Earps built all the way out here, on their own, with nobody around?

Waverly shrugs. “My family’s always been strange. It didn’t really seem out of character.”

“Over there.” The Blacksmith directs her to into a passing spot. “Bring the bones, and follow me.”

She leads Waverly away from the road, down faint dents in the grass that suggest there used to be a track, stretching out into the grasslands.

“What do you know about the Ghost River curse?” she asks Waverly abruptly, after twenty minutes of silent walking.

“Mostly what Aunt Gus told me. Wyatt Earp killed a powerful witch’s sons, so in revenge –“

“Not a witch. One of the Fair Folk. One that came over with my ancestors, two hundred years ago.”

“I’ve been researching this area for years, and found nothing about any villages around here. No census records, no company ledgers…”

“You wouldn’t have found this place. All the records were destroyed a long time ago.”

They crest a gentle hill, and the Blacksmith stops so Waverly can take in the sight before them.

At first, she can’t see anything different: the track simply continues down ahead of them, rutted and barely visible. Then, she begins to see the shapes.

The square stones, almost completely overgrown, but far too even to have been natural. The slight humps in the grass, forming rectangles that mark where foundations used to be. The remnants of chimneys lie in scattered piles, lower now than the spindly trees that bend in the prairie winds.

There’s nothing left to say for sure what buildings used to stand there. Waverly would guess the small squares used to belong to the houses, while a few larger ones mark where a saloon or store might once have stood.

A ghost town, long abandoned.

“Devil’s Gap,” the Blacksmith hisses.

Squaring her jaw to the unpleasant task, the Blacksmith leads Waverly down the hill, past the shapes and towards the only building that still has visible walls. It obviously used to be the church - nobody builds their home in the shape of a cross - with a large bell rusting at one end.

The cemetery fence is mostly gone, but the stone grave markers huddle together in the long grass beyond the church. The moss grows thick and makes it clear no one has been back to care for these dead. Waverly hopes that nothing more than the natural shifting of the earth in the frost has made those graves sit crooked.

“The bones.” The Blacksmith gestures at the ground, and steps back.

Waverly wishes the Blacksmith would just tell her what scares her so deeply about an old skull. When she places it on the old floorboards, she feels no tingling of magic that Gus had taught her to look for so long ago. Nothing but the dryness of age, and the smooth, clean bone. She clutches the empty box closer, and wonders if the rest of the skeleton is merely a few feet away, under a forgotten marker.

“Now, your necklace.” The Blacksmith holds out her hand.

Waverly steps back, her hand reflexively going to her talisman, her only source of protection. “No.”

“You will never find the answers you seek clinging to the safety of that trinket.” Waverly still doesn’t budge. “I promise to return it to you, after. But the spell won’t work; your talisman will draw the magic away.”

Waverly wraps her fingers around the small metal bird. She hasn’t taken it off since she was seven, when Gus had told her what it was. What it had meant to her mother, and what it would come to mean to her.

She looks into the Blacksmith’s eyes and realizes that she’d waited until now on purpose. She’d known that Waverly would refuse to hand over her talisman, that the wrenching disappointment Waverly had caused herself would be all the rougher for coming so close to the answers she wants.

It’s a lesson. A statement, that Waverly’s not strong enough for this fight, that she should go home and leave the Blacksmith in peace.

Waverly thrusts the necklace at the Blacksmith.

“Now, reach out to the bones. Let them speak to you.”

Waverly kneels down, reaches out, and places her hand on the skull. Nothing happens.

“Reach out.”

Waverly closes her eyes, and focuses on the skull. It seems a weird thing to suggest, to reach out to a bone, to want to talk to a dead man. Waverly can’t figure it out, and then, suddenly, it clicks.

_Who were you?_

The edges of her vision blur, and the world changes. The old bell has gone from the floor ahead of her, and a rope disappears up into the tower where she remembers it being. There are walls now, rising around her, and Waverly’s certain that if she moved to one of the tiny windows, she’d be able to see the graveyard outside, well-tended, and possibly a little emptier.

The skull that had been under her hand is being lifted out of a cauldron, boiling water streaming off the freshly exposed bone. The hand holding the tongs is gloved in thick, workmanlike leather, but the rest of the woman is silks, and frills, and a spreading skirt that rustles at her every movement. She holds the iron tongs at arm’s length, regarding them with a look of extreme disgust, and dropping them as soon as she can.

She places the skull on the altar next to another, already cleaned, and begins a low chant that she doesn’t stop even as hoof beats and shouts erupt just beyond the closed door of the church.

“Constance!”

The yell comes just before the door is kicked in, allowing a group of armed men to march in.

Waverly could have figured it out from Constance’s dress alone, but the men confirm it beyond a doubt. They’re dressed right out of the Old West, every one.

“You will answer for your crimes!” the lead man shouts again, and pulls his kerchief down with a dramatic flourish. Waverly gasps: the distinctive moustache of Wyatt Earp is a sight she’s seen all her life, in reserved sepia tones on paper.

In real life, it twitches in righteous indignation when Constance laughs. He raises the Buntline Waverly knows he calls Peacemaker, but that doesn’t seem to worry Constance.

“You are too late, Sheriff. The spell is cast, the hour is come, your glorious ride is at an end.”

She turns, grinning in victory. Wyatt stares at her, uncomprehending, until the effects begin to take hold of his friends.

They begin to sweat. Then shake. Then scream.

Most of them are masked, and flee as they begin to shift, bones breaking and skin tearing, but one stays by Wyatt’s side. He pulls off his mask to plead with Wyatt, with the witch, and Waverly recognizes his face before it lengthens into the muzzle of a wolf.

She’d pointed a shotgun at that face a few short days before, back in her own time. It’s the leader of the Revenant wolf pack: Bobo.

“I will kill you for this,” Wyatt spits at Constance. “Even if it means my own death.”

He points his gun at her, but she just laughs again.

“I’m not going to kill you. I saved the best for you. I sacrificed my boys’ bodies to trap you in a living hell.” With the soft sweep of her dress on the wood, she glides towards Wyatt with no sign of fear of the pistol he has pointed at her. “I curse you, Wyatt Earp. I curse you to watch your loved ones, and their loved ones, suffer through this curse... forever.”

Peacemaker begins to burn Wyatt, and he tries to drop it, to throw it away, but he can’t. There’s a blinding flash and the gun falls to the ground.

Wyatt’s gone.

The vision fades, and Waverly finds herself in a heap on what’s left of the church floor.

The Blacksmith walks to stand over her, but doesn’t move to help Waverly to her feet. “Now you know. Curtis wasn’t being kind to you when he bequeathed those bones to you. He’s painted a target on you, and there are people that _will not stop searching_ until they find you.”

//

Wynonna’s halfway through that evening’s bottle, and as comfortable as she can get on straw, when she hears the sound of engines coming up the drive.

Multiple engines. _Motorbike_ engines.

Wynonna springs up to the little barn window so quickly she has to reel back while her eyeballs catch up, but when they do, she sees a sight that would make her blood run cold, if only she still had her own blood in her veins.

Six Bandidos, swinging off their bikes.

Gus rushes out onto the porch to meet them, clutching her shotgun. They only thing Wynonna had ever seen her shoot at were weasels, after the chickens, and even then she’d missed.

“Good evening, ma’am,” Doc tips his hat down, a sly smile under the curl of his moustache.

It’s a routine Wynonna’s seen countless times. The gentleman, swaggering openly in range of an easy shot, while his men spread out, ready to flank. It’s the pantomime of the fair fight, the chance honor demands he offer the enemy.

Well, this time, there’s a snake in the grass.

“I was led to believe you are in possession of some items of interest. Would you be willing to talk trade?”

“There’s nothing I want to talk to you about. Now get off my land.”

Gus’s talk is tough, but if Wynonna can see the way the shotgun barrel is dipping as she trembles, then the other vampires can, too. Even with a steady finger on the trigger, she’s only got two shots, and neither of those will keep any of the Bandidos down for long.

There’s nothing for it but to play the big damn hero.

Wynonna bursts out the barn, Peacemaker already raised in one hand. The other hand’s still wrapped around the neck of her bottle, and if it comes to it, she’d bet on the glass over the revolver, but she’s staked more than her life on weaker bluffs before.

“Get the hell away from my aunt, you over-dressed goat.”

“Wynonna.” Doc raises his hands in mock surrender, turning slowly to face her. “I was wondering where you were hiding.”

“Not hiding.”

“You won’t be shooting anybody, either, not with that gun.”

‘Bet your life?” Wynonna spits back with far more confidence than she feels.

They stare each other down across the yard. An unnatural stillness descends, nothing moving but the empty branches waving in the wind.

“Not today,” Doc says, eventually, with a tinge of amusement that sets off alarm bells in Wynonna’s head. “I will have those bones, Mrs. McCready, you can depend on that. Good day to you.”

Whatever caused Doc to decide to step back, she’s pretty certain it wasn’t the useless piece of steel in her hand. Not knowing leaves her with a queasy feeling in her stomach as she watches the Bandidos leave, knowing they’ll be back, and next time she might not be here to step in.

Gus brings out another bottle of whiskey, and thrusts it almost violently at Wynonna.

Wynonna stares at the bottle, not quite believing what she’s seeing. Slowly, she reaches out a hand, and Gus lets her take it with a gentleness that feels alien to Wynonna.

“Thanks,” she says in a small, stunned voice as she opens the bottle and takes a good, deep swig. Not the worst stuff in Gus’s drinks cabinet.

“Well, you did just save my life. I still don’t think you’re doing the right thing, mind.”

“I know.”

“And you’re still not sleeping in the house.”

//

The Blacksmith might think all the records were destroyed, but Waverly knows nothing is ever truly gone. Not completely, and not to a historian that knows what she’s looking for. There will be something in the county files, an order for grain or a payment stub, meaningless on its own, but now she has _context._ Now she knows what she’s looking for.

Waverly comes out of the records room, practically bouncing off the walls with anxiety and excitement, and pushing a dolly stacked with filing boxes.

“I thought my paperwork load was bad,” Nicole quips.

“N-Nicole.” Waverly appears out of her haze of nervousness, and finds herself in a whole new fog of emotion. “What are you doing here?

“Traffic court. Very exciting. And you…?”

“What?” Waverly stares in confusion, until Nicole points. “Oh, the boxes. Yes, just some, um -” Waverly pats the boxes a few times, as if looking for something “- research, on Purgatory. Land surveys, old manifests, family feuds, that sort of thing. Kind of a pet project, you know, local history, it’s sort of my thing…”

“Well, it looks like you’re being very thorough. A true historian.” Nicole’s tone is genuine.

“Thanks,” Waverly smiles up at her, and then realizes that was a mistake. She’s far too close and she’s locked onto Nicole’s eyes. _Shit,_ she thinks, _not this again. Always with the public places. Time to get the hell outta Dodge._ “I – I should go. Get these bad boys loaded up in my Jeep.”

“You want a hand?”

“Don’t you have court?”

Nicole glances at the watch on her wrist. Simple, with a soft leather strap that perfectly fits the soft strength of the wrist it encircles. “I’m early. I’ve got time; for you.”

_H – h – h – holy shit._

‘No, it’s okay, I can handle it.”

Waverly pulls the dolly up onto its wheels, and somehow manages to run them over her own foot, but she’s damned if she’s going to let the pain show on her face and give Nicole another reason to offer to take care of her.

That idea is _terrifying._

One of these days she’ll fire herself up enough courage to actually confront the almost-something that’s building between her and Nicole. But today is not that day. Today is the day she pushes the heavy dolly towards the exit as fast as it will squeak.

//

Nicole honestly can’t believe this is happening.

She’s giddy all over, but she squashes the sensation down so the leap for joy she’s feeling turns into an irrepressibly tapping foot.

Sheriff Nedley’s sending her out on her first solo patrol.

“Traffic duty. At the limit change of 270. Anything… odd happens, I can be right out.” Nicole deflates a little; it sounds as if he doesn’t really trust her after all. He pats her shoulder in an awkwardly comforting sort of way. “You gotta cut your teeth on something a little smaller, or you might break your jaw.”

“Yes, sir.”

//

It’s boring work, but Nicole has learned tricks to keep her mind from wandering from the road ahead. She taps a beat out against the steering wheel, trying to remember songs all the way through, word for word. She picks shapes out of the landscape ahead and uses them to tell herself stories, keeping her eyes focused.

She tries not to daydream about all the things she’d rather be doing, or the person she’d rather be doing them with. That’s a sure way to get distracted.

Further up the road, a large tractor rumbles into view. He’s unlikely to go over the posted speed limit, but it gives Nicole something different to look at, at least. She’s busy occupying herself trying to make out the make – green, almost definitely a John Deere – when the front wheels raise up off the pavement. The driver reverses back, slams to a halt, and then zooms forward, sending the front wheels shooting into the air. Once, twice: Nicole can’t quite believe what she’s seeing.

_Is that tractor… doing wheelies?_

After the fourth time the front wheels slam back onto the road, Nicole snaps back out of it, flicking on her lights and driving down the road, but slowly. The last thing she wants is a tractor driving up the hood of her squad car because she approached him too fast.

Fortunately, he pulls over without anything getting squashed.

The tractor’s large enough that Nicole has to hop up the first step to knock on the door, and then has to hop back again when driver opens it.

“Afternoon, sir. Do you know why I stopped you today?”

The man inside adjusts his ball cap and glares down at her. “You’re bored?”

“You were driving dangerously,” Nicole points out, as patiently as possible.

“It was just a wheelie,” he argues. “There ain’t nobody else on the road. Spend all day going up and down a field so large it takes half an hour to get from one end to the other, you’d wanna let off a bit of steam, too.”

“It’s still a public road. Can I see your license and registration?”

The man rolls his eyes and reaches into the messy depths to retrieve it. There are discarded McDonald’s wrappers and pop cans littering the floor, but Nicole doesn’t see anything suspicious. His speech is steady: he’s a regular, sober asshole.

He hands Nicole the card and paper, and she glances them over to make sure he’s given her the right paper, and not something smeared with ketchup, before she takes it back to her squad car to write up a ticket for careless driving.

Champ Hardy. _That’s a name you give your kid if you want him to grow up to be a dick, sure enough._

When she gets back to the tractor, it’s clear Champ has decided to make the whole affair as awkward as possible, and he leans right back in his seat, forcing Nicole back up onto the step again to show him the parts of his ticket.

“This ticket states that you’ve been fined $800, and six points are imposed against your license. You can pay either by post, to this address; by card, over the phone; or in person at the Purgatory Town Hall. If you wish to contest the ticket –“

“Yeah, yeah, I got it.” Champ snatches the ticket out of her hand. “Not my first rodeo.”

“As you please. Have a nice day, and drive safely.”

Nicole jumps down off the tractor, and winces when she hears something rip. She steps back and looks down. There’s a thin tear running up the outside of her pant leg, and she has to bite her lower lip hard enough to hurt when Champ roars with laughter.

//

Nicole storms back into the station, still wishing she’d written that pathetic worm of a man a higher fine, and praying that none of the other officers see her and ask what happened. Failing to dismount a tractor is not a story she’d like to be going around her rural police department. Fortunately, it seems as if everyone’s gone home for the night.

Everyone except for Nedley, who yells her name and rolls out of his office.

“Sir?” Nicole replies through gritted teeth.

“What happened to your khakis?”

“Ripped them, sir.”

“I can see that. How’d they get ripped?”

“Caught them on a vehicle I was ticketing. I’ve got a spare pair in my locker, sir, I was just going to get changed.”

“And then what? Live in the same pair for two weeks until you can next get into the city?” Nedley sighs. “Oh, why not. It’s a quiet night. Go, get changed. I’ll show you one of my old man tricks.”

When Nicole walks back in, ripped pants in one hand, Nedley has a small sewing kit laid out on his desk. Nicole blinks at him in surprise.

“You just happened to have that lying around?” she asks in a dubious tone.

“Keep one in my locker.” Nedley takes the khakis and begins to trim the rough edges of the tear as he speaks. “Ever since my first dress parade, back when I was a rookie greener than you. It was the opening of the new station – this one, that we’re in now – and I’d lost a button on my dress uniform at the last minute. Sheriff Earp had an emergency sewing kit in his locker and replaced the button, just like that. God, I learned a lot from old Edwin. Ever since then I’ve kept a little kit of my own at work. Just in case.”

“Edwin Earp?” _Wow, tonight is full of surprises._ “Waverly and Wynonna’s father was Sheriff?”

“No, no. Edwin was their granddaddy. Ward was still a deputy when he… passed.”

Nicole sits back and takes a moment to process the idea. “Wynonna seems like the furthest thing from a policeman’s kid.”

“Yeah, well. Wynonna… well, she had it pretty rough.”

Before she can ask any more questions, Nedley begins to sew, making a ladder of thread between the two folded edges of the tear, and showing her how it disappears when he pulls it taut.

“Where’d you learn all this, Sheriff?”

“My wife, wonderful woman that she was, taught me. Didn’t seem right, her sitting there working away while I put my feet up with a beer. I’m sure she got more done when she wasn’t having to keep an eye on my clumsy fingers, but she never seemed to mind.”

“What happened?”

“She died. A while back.”

“I’m sorry,” Nicole says softly. “What – what was her name?”

“Sarah. Her name was Sarah.” Nedley fluffs out the trouser leg with a jerk that’s probably a little rougher than necessary, then offers it to her. “Here, now you try. And make sure to keep those stitches nice, and neat, and lined up. Don’t want you going around looking all lopsided and scruffy.”

//

Wynonna had been vocally reluctant to let Shorty take her up to Nedley’s latest crime scene. With good reason, she felt, but he kept repeating that she could help, that Nedley asked for her, and in the end, she finds herself following Nedley around a liquor store near the border of the Triangle.

Nedley stomps them into an empty room. “Alright then. Let’s get this over with.”

“Look, I don’t think this was Doc –“

“Just tell me what you _know_ , Wynonna. I’m sure we can put it together the theories for ourselves.”

Wynonna bites back the urge to curse him out, or worse. “The liquor store is a front, obviously. This is one of his waypoints, a kind of temporary storage. Doc might stash things here to wait for the right time to move them out, or to hide them if the situation got too hot. He wouldn’t keep stuff here all the time, and never for long.”

“So, not a reliable target for outside burglary?”

“No,” Wynonna admits. “Someone would need a mole inside the Bandidos to pull this one off.”

She gets what Nedley’s saying: all the evidence points to this being another act of Doc’s retribution, just his way of keeping order. There’s no logical explanation for why she feels in her gut that this has nothing to do with Doc, but that doesn’t stop it gnawing away at her.

She barely hears Nedley telling her he needs to talk to Shorty, that he’s sending her back with Nicole to look over some other open files. Wynonna suppresses a groan.

_Oh, good. Officer Tightpants._

//

Nicole turns out to be every bit the stickler for the rules Wynonna had been expecting, and she’s ready to shred every last file she sees less than an hour in, but Nicole shows no sign of stopping. Maybe it’s the sheer boredom, or the never-ending litany of every misdemeanor the Bandidos have ever committed being laid out in front of her, but for some reason, Wynonna finds herself telling Nicole about Doc’s grandstanding at the McCready Ranch, right down to Gus offering her the whiskey bottle.

“And you think that’s somehow connected to the liquor store robbery?” Nicole asks.

“See, that’s the thing. This hit, it doesn’t make sense. He’d have no reason to trash that store. He never keeps anything there that’s worth a lot, never for more than a day or two, and always on short notice. It’d be nearly impossible for the owner to betray him.”

“Okay, then, so maybe it’s not a retribution hit. Maybe it’s somehow part of all the other recent incidents.”

“Incidents - like what?”

Nicole reaches for more files, and Wynonna slumps her head down onto the desk with a loud groan. If she doesn’t stop with the paperwork soon, Wynonna may well eat her just to escape.

“Multiple hits on different gun stores, the night after I started. Guns that then turned up in the possession of the Yorks, who still won’t give up their supplier. The strange digs, almost weekly robberies, and the disappearances, and the kidnapping, and just... this town is really - Wynonna, someone is planning something big.”

“Man, you’ve put together one hell of a conspiracy case here. Bandidos could do with a devious mind like yours.”

“So you think Doc _is_ behind all this?”

“No, this isn’t his style; not the way he does things.”

“Well, then, who else could it be?”

“Bobo.”

//

The Revenant trailer park has watchtowers, knocked together from scrap wood and rusty sheets, but every single one of them is manned. While the buses, trailers, and tents the wolves call home might be described as ramshackle at best, the fence and guns are all painstakingly maintained. When your biggest rivals have a nasty habit of attacking while you sleep, your priorities shift from comfort to high walls.

Waverly looks around the park, packed with what seems like every Revenant in Purgatory, but none of them are the one she wants to find. Still, she scribbles down what she notices in a little notebook, just like Curtis always told her to, and takes a photo of each new face.

A man with a homemade eye-patch wrapped around his head.

A man with his teeth sharpened to points, which strikes Waverly as seriously impractical. Nobody likes mouth ulcers.

A perfectly matched pair, from their identical hats at exactly the same height, to the curl of their boots. Even the bandanas that cover their faces have the same fold and pattern.

A man with lanky, greasy hair and a haunted, hunted look in his eyes.

And Carl, of course.

Any one of the Revenant wolf pack could have been part of the attack on the homestead.

They light torches that flare in the blackness, a thin spark of warmth against the cold of the night. The wolves circling at the edge of the fire don’t need the heat, and neither does the man who comes to stand in the center, shirtless though he is.

He opens his hands in invitation, the scars across his back marking many past fights, many fights that he’s won, and no one challenges him.

He turns, and confirms the thrill of hope that had risen in Waverly the moment she saw his mohawk.

It’s Bobo, and he roars into the night words that Waverly cannot quite make out. He slams his fist against his chest and the Revenants cheer and howl, sending a chill down Waverly’s spine despite the thickness of her coat. He’s pumping them up for something, she doesn’t know what for sure, but the threat of violence is thick in the air.

At another yell from Bobo, the wolves scatter, running and bounding to their vehicles to roll out en masse, leaving the trailer park abandoned.

//

Nicole doesn’t hear exactly what comes over the radio, but she can hear the suppressed panic in the dispatcher’s voice, and feel the snap of tension in the officers who did hear.

There’s no questions: they need to move out. Now.

Everyone’s gearing up when Nedley gets a phone call. Whoever’s on the end of the line talks, for what seems like far too long. Nedley’s face freezes and stays frozen throughout the phone call. He says nothing until the very end.

“Shit. Thanks.” He doesn’t wait for a reply, just snaps the phone shut to hang up, and then starts barking orders.

Nicole’s buttoning her shirt back over her vest when Nedley comes up to her.

“Go home.”

“What?” Nicole spins to face him, unable to believe she actually just heard the words he said.

“Go home, Haught, and stay there. That’s an order.”

Nicole just gapes at him. Whatever’s happening, whatever they’re about to roll out into, is clearly serious. He’s called in every other pair of hands, on duty and off, and armed them to the teeth. But then he goes and _sends her home?!_

“Keep the vest on, and your sidearm and phone close. Do _not_ leave your house.”

The rest of Purgatory’s police force rattles out past her, leaving Nicole standing alone and so very, very angry. How useless he must think she is, how desperately green, to bench her at a time like this.

//

By the time Nedley shows up at the McCready Ranch, the regular gunfire and flares in the distance have faded to occasional rattles. Waverly had rushed from the trailer park straight home, the nearest place she could get to a phone, and managed to garble out what she’d seen to Gus, but her call had reached Nedley too late to stop the wolves from going where they pleased.

Gus rushes over to him. “Nedley! What’s happening?”

“That idiot Bobo and his pack of fur-heads are attacking the boundary. I’ve got my boys at the town limits, anywhere there’s folks that might get hurt. Other than that, we’re keeping clear. I doubt Black Badge will hold their fire tonight.”

Waverly feels panic wrap barbed hands around her heart. “Nicole?”

“I sent her home. It’s deep enough inside the Triangle that she won’t be able to hear or see much.” Nedley gratefully accepts the flask Gus hands him, and takes a quick pull. “I hope.”

Waverly wraps her arms around herself, and tries to ignore the urge to go speeding into town, to check on Nicole. “What now?”

“Now? Everything changes.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in Research Is Fun: a group of bears is called a sleuth, or a sloth.
> 
> As always, thank you for taking the time to read, and hugest of hugs for the feedback you leave!


	6. When demons go to war

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Dealing with the fallout of Bobo's attack on the boundary has everyone on edge, exacerbated by the new arrivals in Purgatory. Waverly and Wynonna are getting nowhere fast, and could use an ally like Nicole.
> 
> Content warning: brief references to torture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _You somehow see inside me_   
>  _When I lay down_   
>  _You steal my dreams easily_   
>  _When you're around_
> 
> Quiet Lies – Matthew Mayfield

In a wide, empty, blue sky, a drone disturbs the quiet with the _fut-fut-fut_ of its blades and the whine of its tiny engine.

Twenty feet away, a falcon glides along, completely ignored by the drone until, without warning, it sprays a round of bullets across the bird’s flight path.

The falcon falls to the ground, just inside of the invisible boundary.

Whirring to itself in an empty sky, the drone continues on with its patrol.

Nothing leaves the Ghost River Triangle without Black Badge clearance.

//

Nicole has never seen the Purgatory Sheriff’s Department so crowded. Sure, shift changes are normally busy, but there are at least five uniformed officers she doesn’t recognize ferrying boxes into the station, and another three in civilian clothes, but with a straight-backed alertness that’s definitely not civilian. She makes a point to catch the badge when she holds the door open for one of the officers: Calgary Police Service.

As Nicole makes her way down the corridor, she has to squeeze past a large, wheeled trunk with two heavy-duty locks, and then nearly gets run down by a man in a lab coat yelling something about delicate specimens.

“Sheriff... what’s going on?”

“Only some big city boots come stomping in and stolen half our office, that’s what. I know this is far from the glamorous big city, but this is still a police station, and there’s no reason to…” He pauses, staring at Nicole’s empty hands. “No coffee?”

Nicole shakes her head. “Everything’s closed.”

The poor man practically deflates before her eyes. “Perfect.”

“So, sir, these big city guys…” Nicole prompts, trying not to seem too eager.

“Oh.” Nedley drops himself heavily into a chair. “Special task force. Classified. They’ve set themselves up in the back rooms. Seems a lot of space for a pair of fancy special agents, but what do I know, I’m just a small town cop without his coffee.” He waves one hand grumpily at a box sitting on the front desk. “That’s for them, if you’re curious. Don’t think I could stomach another run-in this soon.”

Nicole jumps at the chance. A special task force in Purgatory? They’re sure as eggs not coming for the exciting crime rings – the officer that handled her transfer had repeatedly pointed out that nobody was ever going to put money into sorting out Purgatory - which means they must be after something else. With any luck, they’ll have the answers to last week’s attack, which Nedley’s still being infuriatingly vague about.

Shifting the package to one hand, Nicole raps sharply on the door to the back room and swings right in.

Nicole practically walks straight into a woman who is, to her surprise, even taller than she is.

“Whoa, sorry, didn’t see you there…” Nicole’s smile survives the collision, but gets only a single raised eyebrow in response. “Looks like you’ve got another piping hot delivery from -” she turns the package over to see the distinct crest of the Canadian Special Operations Regiment. _What on Earth does Special Forces have to do with a task force in Purgatory?_ “- wow, CSOR. Oh, I’m Nicole, uh, Officer Haught. You getting settled in alright?”

The woman Nicole had almost slammed into isn’t just looking down at her physically. The expression on her face suggests she’s enjoying a joke far too high-brow to bother sharing with Nicole.

“Officer… _Haught_. I’m Agent Shapiro. And this area is off limits.”

“Ookaay….”

“Next time you walk in here without authorization, you _will_ be charged with treason.” Shapiro yanks the box abruptly from Nicole’s hands. “Run along now.”

Nicole nods, her hopeful cheeriness evaporating. “Nice to meet you, too.”

She turns on her heel and marches out, pulling the door shut behind her a little harder than is really professional. So much for that lead.

//

Wynonna slams the barn door behind her. Of all the cars that could have come up the drive just as it’s gotten dark and quiet enough for her to get out and stretch her legs, it had to be Nedley’s Suburban.

The door creaks open again.

“You been keeping your fluffy hindquarters out of trouble?”

“Keeping my head down, Nedley, just like you asked. Am I free to go now?”

“Not yet.”

“It’s been three days already!” Wynonna spits; she’s far past sick of cow’s blood.

“And you’ll stay away for three months if that’s how it’s got to be. I’m not risking the fate of this town on your temper.” Nedley clears his throat. “But I’ve got some work that might help take the edge off.”

//

 _It’s amazing how many hidden corners Purgatory has_ , Wynonna thinks as Nedley leads her up a set of metal stairs on the side of an abandoned warehouse. The yard clearly used to do a roaring trade in lumber, but it’s been years since the last logs came through.

Inside the door is a small office, the only part of the yard that’s seen any care recently. The man sitting at the table gets up with a grin, smile extended.

“Sheriff! I was wondering when –“ He recoils at the sight of Wynonna. “What’s she doing here?

“Easy, Fish, she’s with me. Wynonna –“

“We’ve met,” Wynonna says. “Can we all just skip the grandstanding and get down to it?”

“Yeah, sure.” Fish sinks back into his chair, and waits until Wynonna and Nedley have sat down, too. “I guess you want to know why Bobo went up against Black Badge.”

Nedley drops his hat on the table with a soft thump. “And why you didn’t warn me it was coming.”

“I didn’t know. Bobo’s had us all over, scattered in small groups, doing weird jobs. But separate, y'know, so we didn’t know what he was planning. Honest, I had no idea that was coming.”

“But you _were_ part of it,” Wynonna says.

“Yes. Where Route 760 meets the boundary. That’s where he had most of the pack, y'know, one big punch. I’m fairly certain he’d buried a bunch of mines other places, ‘cause a few went off near us. Seemed like it might be going our way at first, they only had a skeleton crew on guard. But then a bunch of trucks rolled up, loaded with their soldiers, and they just overwhelmed us. We barely escaped with our hides intact.”

“But why?” Nedley asks. “Why risk an attack like that?”

Fish shrugs. “Same reason any of us would, I guess. He wants out.”

Without warning, the door bangs open behind Wynonna. Both she and Nedley jump up, hands going to their sidearms. Wynonna’s got Peacemaker up and ready, for all the good she thinks it’ll do, but Nedley doesn’t even get his Glock fully out of its holster.

Instead, Nedley just sighs and steps aside to let a man Wynonna doesn’t recognize into the room. The new arrival has got his own Glock up and ready, a bullet-proof vest strapped around a muscular frame.

“Who the hell are you?” Wynonna drops her revolver, along with the pretense that she’s going to fire it. “What the hell are you doing? Nedley, who the hell is this?”

“Deputy Marshal Dolls. He’s from that new task force. Must’ve followed me.”

“Good thing I did, too.” Dolls holsters his pistol, but that doesn’t make him seem any friendlier. “You in the habit of bringing civilians on unauthorized ride-alongs, Sheriff?”

“Wynonna’s on the books, it’s all above board.”

“Rest assured, I’ll be checking that.” Dolls yanks Fish to his feet. “He on the books?”

Nedley looks as disgusted as if someone put almond milk in his coffee, but he has no choice but to shake his head. Putting Fish on the books would have been tantamount to putting a silver-laced bullet in his brain.

“So you’re going to take him in, just like that?” Wynonna protests. “No charge?”

“My superiors need stuff done fast.”

//

Wynonna can hear Nedley’s footsteps and protests falling behind her as she storms into the station, hot on Dolls’s heels.

“This area’s off-limits to civilians!” a lab coat protests, but Wynonna doesn’t even glance at him.

The door’s locked, but in a building that hasn’t been updated since the ‘80s, the lock stands no chance against Wynonna’s kick, which can send a body twenty feet, even when her blood isn’t up.

Fish is already bleeding, strapped to a chair in the otherwise empty room, and meets Wynonna’s eyes with a look of wide-eyed terror. Dolls just offers Wynonna a bored expression and says something to her, but she doesn’t hear him.

Fish is _bleeding_ , and she can practically taste it, and she’s been here before.

There were others, strapped down just like Fish is now, and she knows how this script goes. She knows what’s going to happen next, has felt the crunch under her fist and heard the screams fade to pleading, fade to sobbing, fade to strangled cries and moans. To grunts. Then silence.

Fish is _bleeding_ , and the world narrows in that horribly familiar way, and Wynonna knows what happens next.

Wynonna finally focuses through the haze of memory and the twitch of her muscles to latch her attention onto Dolls. The man in the chair isn’t who she’s here for, not this time. Dolls is the one between her and what she wants, the answers she needs, and she’s the snap of a thin thread away from moving him.

There’s _blood_ on Dolls’s hands, and Wynonna leans forward under the weight that is pushing her closer and closer.

“Give. Him.” The words are thick around her tongue, and the points of her fangs click against her clenched teeth.

The simple solution is a short bite away, and it is _oh, so tempting_ to let that last thread break. She’d promised Waverly she wouldn’t, she’d sworn to herself that she’d keep it tightly reined down, to wait for the right people, the right moment, but she doesn’t see any other choice.

Part of her doesn’t care.

“What’s going on back here?” Nicole’s voice sounds tinny, and upbeat, and far away, against the growl of Wynonna’s anger.

“She’s interfering in Black Badge business, Officer,” Dolls says. “Remove this woman.”

Nicole looks from Dolls’s blank expression and the blood on his knuckles, to Wynonna’s clenched, but clean, fists, to Fish’s swelling injuries, and then, to Wynonna’s surprise, refuses to obey the order.

“No. You can wave your badge around all you want, but that’s not how things are done around here.”

It’s a nice sentiment, but Nicole couldn’t be further from the truth. She’s still living as if there’s right and wrong, heroes and demons, as if there are reasons to stand up for the downtrodden and win the day. Nicole is living in a world with a shining hope to fight for, but Wynonna knows the world is nothing but grey, grim survival.

“I could have you charged with treason.”

“Oh, yeah, and I’m sure the RCMP will overlook _torture_ when they come to walk me out. Let him go.”

Wynonna digs her fingers deep into the wood of the door frame, making it splinter, and tenses, ready to pounce the moment Dolls goes for his weapon. It takes a moment for her brain to process that Dolls is actually untying Fish, and pushing him towards the door.

“Fine, book him. But I will get my answers.”

They follow a gasping Fish back towards the Sheriff’s side of the station. Wynonna manages to get out some mumbled words of thanks through the almost overwhelming urge to push Nicole aside so she can go back and rip Dolls into pieces.

“Yeah, no problem. I got you, Earp.”

Sheer spite refuses to let Wynonna stumble until she’s sure she’s out of sight of Dolls, but when she does, Nicole catches her.

“Wynonna... are you sure you’re okay?”

Wynonna struggles to nod, trying not breathe anywhere near Nicole, twisting away from the support of her body and its deafening heartbeat, to the cold simplicity of the wall. Going this long without feeding was beyond stupid.

“Abso-fucking-lutely perfect. Do you ever do up those buttons? Jesus. If you’re not careful, you might catch something.” _Like a bite to the neck._

Nicole shrugs, getting out her phone. “I don’t really feel the cold.”

//

Waverly is just closing up Shorty’s when Nicole calls, and the wet cloth slips away from her across the table when she hears that unexpectedly soft greeting in her ear. Hope leaps up with her stomach, and nestles in right under her heart even when Nicole tells her it’s Wynonna. Again.

Nicole’s words might be all business, but her tone is syrup laced with wood smoke, and it gentles the wary tension in Waverly in the same moment that it makes her throat dry in fear.

“I’ll be right there.”

The police station is visible as soon as Waverly walks out the doors of the bar, but she still finds she has to restrain her feet to a walk, to remind her feet where to find the ground as she walks down the street towards Nicole.

“I thought it was better to get her out. I don’t know what happened, but it was pretty rough.”

“Yeah, thank you.”

Waverly struggles to get her breathing back under control as she takes Wynonna’s other side, trying to glance at her eyes and teeth subtly enough to not draw Nicole’s attention. The fact that Wynonna’s got her head turned resolutely down, jaw clenched like a vice, tells Waverly all she needs to know.

Wynonna’s one wrong breath away from violence.

Waverly and Nicole get Wynonna bundled safely into Waverly’s Jeep, and she gratefully shuts the door on one cause of her panic. At her side is Nicole, firing the adrenaline in her veins for very, very different reasons. Waverly turns to thank her again, gaze flicking to meet Nicole’s for the briefest of flashes.

“Just doing my job,” Nicole burrs, and the sound draws Waverly like the heat of a campfire.

Waverly wants to step toward that warmth, but forces herself sideways instead, grounding her galloping thoughts in the way the door handle digs into her side. The shift makes Nicole seem even taller, in that perfect posture she seems to hold without even thinking. It’s another thing that makes her stand out to Waverly, so different from the tensed, crouched shoulders she’s known most of her life.

Nicole stands straight, as if she isn’t afraid, as if she has no reason to hide. As if she believes in what she’s doing, and is proud of it. Her fingers wrap around the buckle of her belt, open to the cold night air. Waverly knows the Sheriff’s department issues gloves, she’s seen the other officers wearing them often enough, but Nicole doesn’t seem to feel the need.

If only the days she ran into Nicole came with a warning, so she could prepare, instead of finding herself standing there gaping in the middle of the street like an idiot. Waverly needs a normal topic to fix on before she careens off into the cacophony of her thoughts.

“How’s the cat settling in?”

“Good, good,” Nicole says. “I’m thinking of naming her Calamity Jane.”

“Oh, no, has she been breaking into your drinks cabinet?”

Nicole laughs, a breathy sound almost lost in the way she tucks her chin down. “Not yet, but I did see her fling herself six meters off the deck to catch a bird before it could fly off. If that’s not the cat equivalent of a crack shot, I don’t know what is.”

“She is one tough cat, that’s for sure. I think it’s a perfect name.”

“That seals it then. Calamity Jane she is.”

Wynonna thumps the car window impatiently, making Waverly jump.

“I should, um, get Wynonna home.”

“Yeah, I think she needs some... quiet. Let me know if there’s anything I can do?”

//

“So I guess this Fish didn’t have anything useful?”

Wynonna half falls, half scrambles out of the car as soon as it stops, and barrels with a manic desperation towards the barn.

“He might have, if we’d gotten to talk to him for more than five seconds before the big city loafers charged in.” Wynonna pulls up a blanket, but the bottle she finds under it is already empty, and she throws it away in disgust. “It’s been months, and we’re no closer to figuring out which of these assholes killed Curtis.”

With a sigh, Waverly pulls a small bottle of Crown out of her winter coat and wordlessly hands it over. Wynonna wrinkles her nose, but twists off the lid and gratefully drains a quarter.

“Fuck me, that feels better.”

“Better than tearing up the Sheriff’s department.”

Wynonna waves a dismissive hand. “I had that totally under control.”

“No you didn’t.” Waverly sits on the lump of blankets Wynonna calls a bed. “We’ve hit a dead end, haven’t we?”

“Don’t say that.” Wynonna waves the now half-empty bottle of whiskey at her. “Don’t you dare say that. We’ll figure this out, we just need... time, or you’ll find something in that huge pile of papers about - what was that place called?”

“Devil’s Gap. All I’ve found is scraps of stuff that happened over a hundred years ago; nothing that might explain what’s happening _now_. We need to talk to Bobo.”

“You aren’t going anywhere near that trailer park, not alone, and especially not with Black Badge crawling over it like fleas on a dog. Nedley says they brought some tech geek who’s got it under 24/7 surveillance. Anyway, your spell said it wasn’t the Revenants. That’s the whole reason we’re here, and not actually _doing_ something.”

“You know the York boys would have given up Bobo in a heartbeat. Whoever they’re protecting –“

“Yeah, big scary. I get it.”

“Like Doc? I know, I know, but we can’t rule out the Bandidos completely. Not after he came looking for Curtis’s skull. He knows _something_.”

“We don’t need to go chasing Doc. He’ll be back when we least expect it.”

“So what, we just sit around and wait for answers to find us? That is not a plan, Wynonna.”

“We just gotta keep digging, and not let anyone figure out what we’re after.”

//

Nicole is out on patrol when the call comes in for shots fired. She rushes to help, desperate to feel useful again, but it’s all over by the time she gets there.

Three other squad cars, including Nedley’s, are parked in front of a house, along with a dark Suburban that takes up almost as much space as the other vehicles combined. The shingles are curling away from the wall, missing entirely in some places, and the screen door hangs by a single hinge.

There’s a single cow in the pasture next to the house, cowering against the far corner of the fence.

Lonnie has been set to unspooling the barricade tape, a task even he can’t mess up, and tells her Sheriff Nedley is inside. Nicole navigates the haphazardly scattered junk in the yard to step inside the open door. There’s an odd body lying in the kitchen, with misshapen ears and skin the color of iceberg lettuce, but she gets no more than that first glimpse before Nedley bustles her back out.

“You can’t be in here. Tim was working with some dangerous chemicals – Black Badge are taking over the scene. We need to clear out. Now.”

Agent Dolls swans past them, and Nicole realizes that thinking of Agent Shapiro as aloof left no room for describing Dolls’s attitude. At least Shapiro had acknowledged her existence.

“Keep your head down, Officer Haught,” Nedley insists. “These idiots are giving me enough trouble as it is, and now they’ve got Wynonna on their radar. The last thing I need is you getting even more mixed up in this mess. Play it smart, I know you know how. Understood?”

“But, sir –“

“Haught. If you’re not going to let this go, you might as well hand in your resignation right now and save us both a lot of time and effort.” He stares her down, waiting for her decision with an infuriatingly impassive expression. “Well?”

“I understand, sir.”

Nicole storms back to her car and slams the door shut behind herself, fuming. All she can keep asking, over and over, is why Nedley would go to all that effort to recruit her, just to sideline her at every damn turn.

//

_After the graduation ceremony, Nicole looks around at the other cadets, in happy little groups with their families._

_She doesn’t bother trying to find her father. She knows he won’t have come._

_Nicole’s alone in the crowd, just like always, until one of the instructors comes up to her. He was one of the best, a crusty ex-cop called Sam Barnes, who had pushed her harder than any of the other cadets, and she strongly suspected his voice had been one of the loudest putting her forward for top candidate._

_Sam offers her a business card that reads “Purgatory Sheriff’s Department.” He says he knows she’ll probably want to stay in the big city, but asks her to think about the offer, to call the number if she’s even remotely interested. The town’s Sheriff was an old buddy of his, from back in the day, and he’d appreciate it if Nicole would at least sit down with him._

_Two days later, Nicole walks into a Tim Horton’s just the other side of a town called Cochrane to meet a man who, on first glance, looks a few good shocks away from a heart attack. He talks for a bit about the Academy, asks her some standard questions about her training, and Nicole is about to call it a bust when the Sheriff starts to talk about his town._

_He talks about the weirdos, and the repeat small offenders, and the never-ending feuds. He talks about helping, about making a difference in small ways, about being there when the need is greatest. He talks about the faces he knows, the people he sees every day, who look to his uniform and ask him to help._

_He talks about a place to call home, and Nicole agrees to the transfer on the spot._

//

Wynonna digs her elbows into the table and tries to ignore the glint of the two-way mirror in the corner of her eye. She hates being watched. She’s always hated the anonymous blankness of those mirrors. Anyone could be on the other side, watching her every move, and she has no idea who they are. No idea how many, or what they want.

At least she can see the assholes in front of her. She might want to rip their faces off, but they _have_ faces.

The voices in the walls have haunted her all her life.

Shapiro leans down to stare Wynonna right in the eye. “We know what you are. We know your record, your _real_ record, not the badly doctored file Nedley has. We know about the Bleeker case. How’d you like to spend the rest of your short and painful life in a Black Badge prison?”

“How’d you like to stop bullshitting me and start dealing with the real problems that are going on here?”

“I’d say a violent death _is_ a real problem. Tim Harely’s throat had been ripped clean out. That takes a lot of force.”

“There’s not a lot out there that can stop an orc, short of a thermonuclear device. Say, you didn’t bring one of those with you, did you?”

“We know you know who killed him. Why not make this easier on yourself and just tell us?”

Wynonna wishes she knew. It wouldn’t change any of the curses and insults she throws at Dolls and Shapiro, and she’d never tell them the truth, but she’s no closer to an answer than the officious assholes she finds herself racing against.

Eventually, Dolls and Shapiro decide to find a softer nut to crack and let Wynonna go.

Nedley’s waiting at the end of the corridor. “The interview go okay?”

“Dolls and Shapiro have all the warmth and humanity of a day-old hotdog,” Wynonna spits.

“You seem to be handling it well. Much better than yesterday.”

Wynonna clenches her jaw. The bastards in army boots know about the fucking Bleeker case, and now Nedley knows how close she came to ripping off heads in the middle of a police station. Seems like there’s no secrets left in Purgatory anymore.

“Nicole told you about that, huh?”

“Harangued me, more like.”

He’s calm, not accusing, but Wynonna can hear all the things he’s not saying. She’s heard them often enough, and she is trying, but that doesn’t stop the way she’s itching for a fight. She would have found one the day before, if it hadn’t been for Nicole.

Nicole, who knows none of the secrets Purgatory holds.

“Look, Nedley, I know I’m nobody’s first choice of moral compass, but you should tell her. Y'know, while she can still choose to leave.”

//

Waverly comes out of her interrogation with Dolls and Shapiro an hour later, and lacking the snark of rage that propelled Wynonna. She knows she’s been through worse, she knows it’s nothing but words and she shouldn’t let it get to her, but it does, every time.

Then there’s a soft voice in her ear, and a soft touch on her shoulder, and a soft push that guides her away from the open space and the averted eyes to the temporary safety of Nedley’s office.

Nicole sits down on the couch next to Waverly and offers her the box of tissues Nedley keeps stocked against the inevitable tears that come along with their job.

For once, Waverly’s just too raw, her defenses are too low, she just can’t fight this any longer, and she lets herself give into Nicole’s pull. Maybe the first time she’d had Nicole’s arms around her would have been better if she wasn’t crying into her shoulder, but good god, if this doesn’t feel like _home_.

Nicole lets Waverly cry into the collar of her uniform without pressing for an explanation, waiting patiently until Waverly eases back into her own space as the wave fades. Waverly mumbles an apology, and cleans herself up as best as she can with crumpled handfuls of tissue.

“Um, Waverly, is this about your sister...?” Waverly immediately tenses. “I know, I know, it’s none of my business. I’m just... I guess I’m just a little concerned, okay?”

“No, it’s not okay!”

“Sorry, I didn’t mean... just.... Waves – Waverly – there’s something going on here, isn’t there? Something bothering you?”

“Yes,” Waverly says, in a voice that sounds small even to her.

“You can talk about it, you know. Or not. Whatever you need.” Nicole reaches for Waverly’s hand, offering reassurance, but the ripples just shiver over every inch of Waverly’s skin, and if such a small, simple touch on her bare skin can do this to her, she’ll never survive any of the things she’s only just realized she wants.

Driven by her pain, and her hope, and a fragile desperation, Waverly surges forward to press her lips to Nicole’s.

She knows as soon as their noses collide that this isn’t how she wanted this to happen. She wants it - great Gaia, does she ever want it - but it shouldn’t be like this.

It should be soft, and she should have time to think about the gentle curl that’s escaped Nicole’s braid to brush against her forehead. It should be hard, in the press of bodies elated to finally be colliding.

She shouldn’t be practically tearing claw marks in the front of Nicole’s uniform just because she needs something to hold onto, something solid to try and help her believe that the world is still there.

It should be beautiful, and romantic. She should be confessing wild dreams, and getting lost in Nicole’s eyes.

Nicole shouldn’t end up with the taste of Waverly’s tears on her lips, and Waverly should be trembling with nerves and desire, not the fear that all she’s gained is another person to lose.

She should be giddy with the newness of it all, hands fluttering with the uncertainty of where to touch.

She shouldn’t be panicking about the coming storm, and the boots marching into her world that want to tear it down, and wondering how many nights she’s going to hear gunfire.

She should be doing this because it will make them _both_ happy.

“Waves…are you sure?”

Of course she’s sure, and of course she’s not. Now, with faint memory of the pressure left by Nicole’s lips, she knows there’s no way she can do this. This isn’t who she is. She can’t be so selfish as to tie Nicole to this life, not after all it’s done to rip Waverly apart.

Head turned so that she doesn’t have to see Nicole’s hope struck from her face, Waverly scoots back away from her.

“I have to go.”

She doesn’t have to, she doesn’t want to, and the tears are swelling up all over again with how good it would feel to give in, to move towards those hands that are reaching out for her, to give into Nicole’s voice, pleading with Waverly to talk to her, telling her it’s okay, telling her that there’s nothing she has to do.

Waverly knows she’s wrong.

She has to leave.

//

At home, Nicole lifts off her Stetson, but she doesn’t send it flying towards the stand with the flick she’s been perfecting for months. Instead it feels unusually heavy as she eases it onto the hook, and then she sits to take off her boots, slowly pulling the laces loose.

There’s a spot on her ankle that marks where she’d pulled the laces too tight that morning, and she rubs at the indent before she pads into her bedroom. Once her pistol’s nestled in her safe, she eases the leather through the buckle of her duty belt and hangs it on its usual hook on the back of her bedroom door.

Most evenings she’d stop there, not changing out of her uniform for another hour or so, comfortable going through her routine with the badge still on her shoulder.

Tonight, however, she needs to shed the day completely, to peel off every last item that ties her to this job that’s more than a job, to step out of the space in her head that’s tied to the clothes she leaves on her bed. Her fingers find the spot on the collar that still holds the faint dampness left by Waverly’s tears, and she bunches the material inside a fist. Waverly had been there, had been in her arms, and Nicole wanted nothing more than to help, to soothe the jagged edges of Waverly’s pain.

Waverly had left. She’d fled, and left Nicole with the taste of salt on her lips, and creases in her shirt, and the desire to go after Waverly shouting inside the stunned hollow in her head. Nicole’s still reeling from the way Waverly seems to swing in and out of reach, and she can’t reach out and touch her until she settles. There’s a secret there, there’s secrets everywhere.

Nicole yanks open her fridge door and considers the spread of beers she’d picked up to try. She picks a Grizzly Paw with the amusing name of Grumpy Bear, pops the top off, and then sits down to _think_.

Only once she’s had a few good pulls of her beer does she open her phone and look at the pictures she’d taken. That body, in the morgue... it had green skin. Strange ears. That was a hard, stick-a-pin in it _fact_. She hadn’t been confused, it hadn’t been the lighting. The photo evidence is right there on her phone.

Oh, sure, there are gods know how many different things out there that could turn a person green, but that’s no reason to go hiding their corpse. No, something is definitely not adding up here.

Nicole won’t stop until she finds out what it is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eternal and never-ending thanks to that Smurf we all know and love, without whom I'd still be staring at a blank page, yelling obscenities. And many thanks to you, gentle reader, for sticking with me through this slow build-up. We'll be going off the edge next chapter, so bring your anxiety pants then.


	7. You'll never want to leave

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This fic has already been rated M for mature content and descriptions of violence, but I would like to give everyone a heads up that this particular chapter has scenes involving a character experiencing severe physical pain, as well as intense emotional distress. Please proceed with caution, and also with your anxiety pants at the ready.
> 
> Hugest of thanks to the incomparable, the indescribable, the inescapable Smurfopedia, who has been so patient while hashing out this chapter. I hope it is worthy of her time, and your attention.
> 
> You can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _But you’ve got blood on your hands, and I know it’s mine_
> 
> Unfinished Business – Mumford & Sons
> 
> _It's scratching on the walls, in the closet, in the halls_   
>  _It comes awake, and I can't control it_   
>  _Hiding under the bed, in my body, in my head_
> 
> Monster - Skillet

Wynonna waits until midnight has been and passed, when she’s sure Waverly and Gus are fast asleep, before she wheels her bike far enough down the drive that the engine won’t wake them. It won’t be too much longer before the snow comes and relegates her bike to the barn, but for now, the light dusting and snap of cold isn’t enough to force Wynonna inside a car.

Sure, Waverly will probably tear her a new one when she finds out Wynonna went hunting after clues without her, but better safe and angry than falling foul of the same thing that got Tim. She hides her bike further up the road and approaches the empty, broken-down homestead through the woods.

The route to the back door is clearer than the front, and when Wynonna eases it open, she’s greeted by the sight of Tim’s abandoned boots and coat. Front doors are for funerals and weddings, Aunt Gus had always said. Wynonna shuts it behind her with a soft click, and walks into the darkness without needing to hunt for a light switch.  
The fact that it wasn’t locked is a bad sign. She doubts Black Badge would have left it open if there was anything left to find. 

The house holds nothing but the signs of a lonely life, and Wynonna turns over the bottles in a hopeful sort of a way. They’re all empty, just like the ones scattered around the barn Wynonna sleeps in.

“If I’m looking at my future, kill me now,” Wynonna mutters to herself.

She finds a photograph of Tim with a group outside a club in the city. Everyone’s in costume; must be Halloween, the one night a year an orc could walk the streets openly. Or at least, it used to be. Back before Black Badge controlled the border.

The photograph, and the bottles, and the mess Tim had left are not what’s wrong here. It’s the things that Wynonna doesn’t see that set her fangs on edge.

No weapons, no lab, nothing that you wouldn’t find on any run-down farm anywhere in the Ghost River County and, what’s more, no space to mark where anything had been taken. No usefully unstained squares of carpet, or empty patches on a table. No trap doors, or hidden spaces.

Whatever Black Badge had wanted here, the dirty bomb making was clearly just an excuse.

The lights flick on.

Wynonna shields her face with her arm, but not fast enough: the room explodes in a painful white blur. Stumbling backwards, her other hand reaches out and hits a wall. A corner, she’s got to find a corner, get her back up against it until her sight comes back.

By the time it does, there are three other figures in the room with her, filling the space with the stink of unwashed male fur.

“Bobo,” she spits.

“Wynonna Earp. You have something that belongs to me.”

“Like I’d ever want anything your filthy paws had been all over.”

“Not _my_ paws: Fish is bit too romantic for my tastes. Yours too, so I’ve heard.”

The insult makes Wynonna twitch, but she doesn’t rise to it. “I don’t have Fish.”

“Really?” Bobo strokes his chin and grins at one of the other wolves. “So he’s not currently enjoying a night at Hotel Nedley?”

“Black Badge brought him in, not Nedley. Even if I wanted to, I couldn’t spring him.”

“I think you could.” Bobo takes a couple of steps forward, so when he grins, he’s close enough for Wynonna to make out the chip missing from one of his front teeth. “And I think you’re going to, or else I’ll come and take something of yours. Eye for an eye.”

“Bullshit.” Wynonna pushes him back, and his grin doesn’t fade even as he stumbles. “You wouldn’t dare, not right now. Not with Black Badge so close on your tail. Hard to do business with the law breathing down your neck, and even Nedley will be after your ass if you dare touch Waverly.”

“Yes, everyone would be so upset if something unfortunate were to happen to their little angel.”

“Like the ‘something unfortunate’ that happened to Tim?”

“Now, why would I do a thing like that?”

“Whatever reason you had for being ‘round here last time. What was he working on? The bombs that you used in the attack? Or are you planning something else?”

Bobo laughs, but without true humor. “He never worked for me.”

“Sure, and I’m Hans, the counting horse. Go lick a window, Bobo, and stop wasting my time.”

Bobo jerks his head at the other two, who move aside to let him out the door. “I want Fish back, Wynonna, or things are going to get unpleasant.”

//

Nicole is woken by a weight on her back, and the odd, batting pull of Calamity Jane poking the back of her head with a paw. She’s fallen asleep on the couch, a half-drunk cup of coffee dangerously close to the files scattered all over the sitting room table.

When Nicole moves, the cat jumps off, and Nicole has to lunge for the cup before it’s sent flying, drenching the pile of reports she’d spent the last few days digging into. She hasn’t gotten more than three hours sleep since the day Tim died – _the day Waverly kissed her_ – and she feels like she’s no closer to an answer to either mystery.

Calamity Jane jumps into her lap and begins head-butting her hand, threatening to send the rescued coffee all over Nicole instead of the papers

Nicole pushes her off with a muttered, “Alright, alright,” and heads into the kitchen, dumping the cup in the sink before putting food down.

Looks like it’s going to be another long day.

//

Wynonna trails a finger around the rim of her whiskey glass, the one constant in her life, and wonders how many refills it’s going to take tonight before she passes out. It’s one hell of a way to get some rest, but she can’t remember the last time she fell asleep without it.

At least if she’s unconscious, she won’t be able to go back to the Sheriff’s department and use Dolls’s head as a basketball. _Self-righteous asshole._

She tips another measure out of the bottle Shorty left to keep her company. Peering critically at its progress to emptiness, she almost misses the stranger that walks in the door.

Once the sun set in Purgatory, someone walking into a bar alone was a rare occurrence, and generally terminal.

_Fucking tourist_ , Wynonna gripes to her glass.

She’s seen his type before, usually at Pussy Willows, claiming they’re just looking for a little adventure. This one must be lost.

What the hell. She can give him what he wants: maybe get a little herself.

//

Three hours later, Wynonna walks out of Purgatory’s only motel to see Nicole, leaning on the hood of her squad car.

“The station should probably just have you on speed dial.”

“Phone died.”

“Of course,” Nicole sighs. “The owner says you caused some damage. You gonna pay for it?”

“He shouldn’t have slammed the door in my face and refused to rent me a room!”

“Wynonna…” Nicole is infuriatingly calm, but her solid presence somehow steadies Wynonna, in a way that the booze, and the blood, and the boy in the room behind her had failed to.

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll make nice. Happy?”

“You need a ride home?”

“Yeah, thanks.”

//

“All units, this is Dispatch, we have a noise complaint at one-five-three Hummingbird Lane.”

Nicole taps the address into her computer before keying her PTT.

“Haught responding, I’m eight minutes out.”

“10-4, Haught.”

Nicole swings her car out into the road, letting one part of her mind concentrate on taking her down the highway, while another part tracks the chatter on the radio. In terms of multitasking on the job, it’s a pretty low ask, but she slips into that brain space, grateful for the boredom relief it offers.

Lonnie jogging out to greet her isn’t a surprise – he called in just after she did – but the fact that he immediately tries to stop her going in just dials her shit-sensor up several notches.

It’s bad enough that Nedley thinks she can’t handle herself. If even useless fucking Lonnie is brushing her off, she’s fallen so low in the pecking order she might as well hand in her wings right now.

Giving up is not something Nicole does easily.

She pushes past Lonnie, riding the wave of frustration that’s been building over the past few days. There’s not enough patience left in her for calm and collected, not when she’s so sure can get to the bottom of everything, if she pushes just a little harder.

It looks like the source of the noise disturbance has been pushed far harder than she’d even think of going.

One eye is swollen shut, the other not far behind. He’s filthy, clearly been living rough, and the blood tracks down his face through the dirt, obscuring the sickly hue of the skin underneath. The way he cradles one hand in his lap suggests that at least some of his fingers are broken.

He’s missing an _ear._

It would be a fairly open and shut scene, if it wasn’t for the fact that the man is free, leaning back in a chair, and attempting to smoke a cigarette through lips split in several places.

He grins at her.

Around him stand several men that are glaring right at Nicole, each baring the hook tattoo she’d seen on her second day in Purgatory.

Revenants.

“Any chance someone’s going to tell me what’s going on here?”

“I got this, Haught,” Lonnie says from behind her. “Leave this to me, will ya?”

“Just friends here, helping each other out.” A voice slides out of the crowd, followed by a face Nicole only knows from mug shots. The guards part respectfully, and Nicole wouldn’t need the pictures to know exactly who is standing in front of her, smirking as if he’s already won. “Looks like Sam here had a little accident. He was just telling us all about it.”

“Bullshit. Those wounds are fresh.”

“Ooo, kitty’s got claws,” one of the Revenants crows, instigating a wave of laughter and meowing.

_Wow, that’s original._ Nicole struggles to stop her eyes from rolling, focusing on Bobo instead of the puerile howling behind him.

“So this wouldn’t be anything to do with the turf battles that happened last week, would it?”

“Turf battles? Officer, this is a small town.” Bobo lays a hand on Sam’s shoulder in a mockery of camaraderie. “We’ve got to look after each other here, don’t we, Sam?”

“Sure, yeah, that’s right. You’re right, Bobo, you’re right.”

Nicole watches Sam take another shaky drag of his cigarette, still nodding along. He’s clearly scared out of his wits, but she can’t just drag him away on a _feeling._ “Sam, did these men cause your injuries?”

“Bobo’s boys? Hurt me? Oh, no, Officer, never.”

Nicole stares at him. She honestly can’t think of the last time she ran into a worse liar, but without a crime reported, or in progress...

There’s a pressure on her arm, and Lonnie wheedles at her to leave it, but she knows that if she walks away now, she’ll loose the best chance at answers she’s had since Black Badge arrived in town. She has to figure out how to persuade Sam to come with her, back to the station, where she can question him without the jeers and catcalls of the Revenants.

Bobo simply stands there, his hand still on Sam’s shoulder, while the rest of his ‘boys’ advance around him, trying to crowd her out of the door by sheer volume. The voices meld into a cacophony of insults, but one stands out.

“What did you say?”

The Revenant grins, resting a hand on the hunting knife at his belt. “I said fuck off, before we fuck you up.”

That’s a _threat_. From a man armed with a _deadly weapon._

She’s spun the man around and yanked his hands back to meet her cuffs before the others realize what’s happening.

“You are under arrest for Assaulting a Peace Officer, pursuant to the Criminal Code of Canada, do you understand? You have the right to retain and instruct counsel without delay. We will provide you with –“

"Haught, I really don’t think this is a good idea..."

"Shove it, Lonnie,” Nicole growls back. “He threatened an officer of the law."

//

Waverly dumps the last spade of manure into the barrow, without the same feeling of relief she usually has once all the stables are cleaned out. It’s odd to think that it won’t need cleaning out again tomorrow, that the horses who have been in and out of the barn for as long as she can remember won’t be back in the morning.

“Well, that’s that over with,” Gus says, adding her own final spadeful to the barrow.

“When are the next buyers coming by?”

“That’s it. That’s the last of the young ‘uns, and it’s a relief to finally get them sold, let me tell you. Half the folks that tried to come couldn’t get through that checkpoint Black Badge set up.”

“So you’re keeping the rest?”

“Yeah, they’re old, won’t fetch very much. Anyway, I don’t think I could stand living here without _any_ horses. Wouldn’t feel right.”

Waverly can’t help but agree. Gus hands over her spade so she can wheel the barrow away towards the manure pile, and Waverly takes both spades away to hang up on the nails Curtis had banged into the wall for hanging tools on, back when the world seemed to make sense.

Her world is changing around her, so fast Waverly thinks she might fall off before she ever manages to understand any of it. Or worse, before she can do anything to stop the coming storm. Digging things up piece by piece is a painfully slow way to uncover the truth, and if she doesn’t pick up the pace, the answers will be stolen from her before she ever gets a chance to see them.

Waverly hates feeling complicit in the ways Purgatory is barreling towards a showdown, but she knows that if she does nothing, she won’t be ready, and the world she’s fighting to protect will be lost entirely, even in their minds.

Curtis, who spent his life doing the little things that made the world around him imperceptibly better, left the bones to _her_. Of all the people he could have passed them on to, he thought she was the right person to carry that hope forward, and she can only pray it’s not too little, too late. That she doesn’t let him down.

“You’ve hidden those bones, haven’t you?”

Waverly starts: Gus hadn’t just snuck up, but apparently had read her mind as well. “Yeah, I thought –“

Gus cuts her off with a warning shake of her head. “Don’t tell me. What I don’t know can’t be beat outta me.”

It’s a horribly sobering thought, but Waverly doesn’t waste breath denying it’s a chance they’re facing. “Well, I can tell you it’s definitely somewhere Doc would never think to look.”

“Good.” Gus places a hand on Waverly’s shoulder, and gives it a rough squeeze before pulling her into a hug, tight with more than just the light feelings her words express. “Y’know, you’re a good kid. I’ve been meaning to thank you, for coming by and helping out so much. I don’t think I could have gotten through the past few months without you.” She releases Waverly from the hug, but keeps a hold and examines her critically. “Especially this week. There someone in town who you’re trying to avoid?”

“No!” Waverly lies.

Gus smiles at her in that infuriating way, that Waverly knows sees right through her, and just pats her arm, before heading up to the house.

As Waverly follows, her feet leading the way up the cleared path on autopilot, her thoughts struggle back and forth with each other. All the things she’s ever known, all the things she’d ever been told were truth, fighting against the way she feels. This can’t be all there is. The world can’t really be this hard, this cruel, not all the way through. There has to be room for a little light somewhere, she just has to find it.

They’re inside, Gus bustling around making tea while Waverly sets the table for supper, before the whirling of Waverly’s brain settles on a question.

“Aunt Gus?”

“Mhm?”

“Do you ever regret it? Moving to Purgatory, marrying Uncle Curtis? Or did you just know, right from the start?”

“Oh, I didn’t know, not at first. Curtis was not a handsome man. When I first laid eyes on him at the cookout, I said to your mother, just how closely related are his parents?" Waverly laughs: she’s heard the story before, but Gus always tells it like the first time. “You know, of course, she’d already married Ward by then, and it seemed a little silly to think I’d follow my sister into this strange exile, but Curtis... he was _good_ man, and that’s hard to find. He had time for everyone, and a heart too big for this town. Once I knew him, I didn’t really think about it. I just knew he was worth it.

“That Nicole, she seems like a sweet girl.”

Gus is concentrating on pouring hot water into two mugs as she finishes her little speech, and Waverly hesitates, kicked into neutral and unsure which way she’s going to end up rolling. There’s no anger in Gus’s tone, but Waverly had no idea anyone had noticed the way she’d seen Nicole. Keeping it hidden had let her pretend that it was a dream, that the waves of madness existed in a world where things were easier, and that she didn’t have to balance the weight of her world in every decision she made. She could pretend she was free, free to choose Nicole and let Nicole choose her.

When Gus puts her tea down in front of Waverly, she’s smiling, and it’s the same warm expression she had worn whenever Waverly had rushed in from the fields, or home from school with a new discovery, a new wonder she’d found in the world that she just couldn’t wait to share.

“Yeah, she is,” Waverly exhales, letting go of more than just her breath. It’s the first time she’s admitted it out loud, to anyone but Nicole.

“But at least I knew what I was getting myself into.”

Waverly is a little stunned. “What do - Nicole knows, doesn’t she? I mean, I thought Nedley told her when Black Badge arrived?”

“No. That man’s been doing everything he can to avoid doing the right thing, and it’s going to blow up in his face, mark my words.”

“But – what about the Black Badge agents? And she called me in to take Wynonna home. She must have known.”

“I think she was just being _nice_ , chicken.”

With a brief squawk, Gus’s attention spins around to the pots on the stove that are threatening to boil their dinner all over the counter, and Waverly is left to sink into a chair in a bubble of temporary seclusion.

Nedley hadn’t told Nicole. No one had told Nicole what she was really up against, here in this town.

She glances up at Gus, who’s still battling the pan, and slips back out into the mud room. In her bag, tucked in behind the slip of her wallet that contains all the loyalty cards she never uses, is the business card Nicole had given her when she picked up Calamity Jane.

Waverly stares at the little crest in the corner, the shape that she’s come to associate with Nicole, with the straight set of her shoulders and the way she looks up and smiles when she realizes Waverly’s there. That outlandish last name, that Nicole wears proudly on her chest, proud to serve.

The soft dip of her voice when she told Waverly to _call her Nicole._

The gentle touch of her hands, and the way they offered to hold Waverly without holding her down, everything that touch promised, without asking anything in return. Her fingers tighten around the thin cardboard, crumpling it slightly. The thought that she could let Nicole take care of her, that she could trust her feelings in the hands of another person, is a crisis she never thought she’d be faced with.

She wants to think there might be a place for Nicole here, but that’s the little voice of selfishness. No one in their right mind would stay in Purgatory if they had a choice, especially not for Waverly Earp. It’s the right thing to do, and if no one else will, then she’s going to have to.

//

Halfway through a pile of files almost as high as her computer screen, Nicole had gotten a text that tied her insides into knots.

_I’m sorry about the other day. Can we talk?_

She stares at the little message under Waverly’s name.

_Yeah, of course. My shift ends at 8._

_Can you come by the ranch?_

//

Winter had arrived with a vengeance. Back east, winter edged in, little by little, drawing the fall out into a steadily muddier, wetter cold, until the snow got around to covering it all. In the prairies, winter fell with a thud like a casket closing, and then stayed.

Nicole hunches forward, staring out at the road through an ever-narrowing section of her windshield. It was a certainty she'd have to pull over and scrape off the ice cover at least once before she gets to the McCready Ranch, but she was resisting the moment when she'd have to get out and face the wind.

A shape gradually forms, dark against the grey-white wall at the edge of Nicole's horizons, and she gently pumps the brakes to slow down.

The shape gradually resolves itself into a car that’s gone off the road. Nicole’s off-duty, has had a rough day, and hopefully has a lot to look forward to at the end of her drive, but she stops anyway. The thought that she might not doesn’t even really cross her mind.

“Hello?” Nicole taps on the window, but there’s no reply, no sign of life. She pulls the flashlight from her belt and shines it in, briefly at first, to minimize the glare. Then again, for longer; there’s no one inside.

Her eyes catch a smear of blood on the door handle.

Her flashlight falls on a small stuffed bear, abandoned in the back seat.

In the snow, all around her, shapes begin to emerge, and then close in.

//

Nicole comes around in a hospital bed, with Sheriff Nedley sitting next to her. _It must be bad_ , she thinks; he’s clutching his hat, tugging it around and around anxiously.

“Sheriff…”

“Nicole.” Nedley leans forward at her voice. That’s the first time Nicole’s ever heard him use her first name.

“What happened?” she croaks.

“We found you on the side of the highway. You were beat up pretty bad.”

“Yeah, I do feel a little rough around the edges. Sheriff, what about -“

“Look, I know you’re concerned. You want to help. I get it. It’s one of the things that makes you such a good cop. But right now all you need to know is we’re doing everything we can, and you did everything you could. You think you can sit tight with that?”

Nicole nods. It’s touching that Nedley’s trying to protect her, but there are definite cracks in his jaded old Sheriff routine. A man doesn’t have that much room to care about a rookie he’s known all of three months without caring about other things far more than he lets on. Whatever’s going on, his act can’t be the whole story.

But she’s too exhausted to keep thinking about it. She can’t untangle that mess right now, so she lets Nedley sit there, radiating awkwardness, until Chrissy appears in the doorway.

She looks _pissed._

Nedley follows her back out into the hallway, out of sight, but Nicole can just about make out the start of their conversation.

“Did you tell her?” Chrissy demands.

“Chris... she was half-dead when they brought her in. She’s in no state to –“

“No. No! That’s just another excuse. You wanted her here, you got her here. You got her stuck here. You owe her the truth.”

Nicole has just enough space left in her brain to wonder what that truth might be, before she loses consciousness again.

//

When the room drifts back into focus, Shorty’s leaning against the far wall, murmuring to Nedley, who waves him into silence as soon as he sees Nicole’s eyes open. It takes Nicole a few moments to get her brain and mouth into gear, but the two men just wait. Watching her, expectantly..

“Sheriff. There’s something going on here, something you’re not telling me. And I don’t mean what happened to the family in that car. Sheriff, what’s wrong?”

“You – you remember when we met, right after your graduation?”

Nicole nods, confused. _What has that got to do with anything?_

“Top of your class. One of the most promising rookies to come out the Calgary academy in years… but that wasn’t really why I recruited you. I needed someone good, I didn’t lie about that. The lads do fine work, but none of them are real Sheriff material. Not on this beat.

“What I needed was a good cop no one would miss.”

At Nedley’s words, an unpleasant flush rises up Nicole’s spine like the sensation of frozen fingers being warmed up a little too fast, but instead of fading, it spreads. Down her arms, flickering around at her ribs, shooting down her legs to her toes, while Nedley’s voice drones on.

“I couldn’t tell you what Purgatory really is. Not right up front. It‘s hard enough recruiting for a normal small town force, let alone... well. I know you’ve been wanting to know the big secret. So, here goes. Everyone likes to pretend Purgatory is just another small, Albertan town, but it isn’t. This place is supernatural central, and no one, not a single person here, can walk away. The whole town – the whole county - is cursed.”

Nicole would laugh, if she thought the sound would get out of her throat without bursting her skin at the seams. It sounds ridiculous, but he’s definitely not joking. Nedley must read some indication in her eyes, or the tendons standing out against her neck, because he nods as if replying to something she’d said.

The tingling sense of foreboding hardens into the cold grip of certainty.

“I know, I know, it sound ridiculous. But I couldn’t tell you, not right away. I wanted to, I was going to, but you needed time to settle in, to get attached. I hoped that when you put down roots, settled in, without any family to lose, that you’d want to stay. Make a life here.”

Now every inch of Nicole’s skin feels like its burning cold, like it’s not even hers any more. She tries to focus on Nedley, to ignore the pain, ignore the anger, to fight the muscles threatening to spasm.

“I couldn’t risk you freaking out, running away. God knows, I wanted to tell you. I waited, but I waited too long, and now... and now... there’s no more waiting. No more later. You’ve been bitten. Now I’ve got no choice. And neither do you.”

Nicole looks up into Nedley’s face. He’s on the verge of tears, the guilt eating away at the lines of his face, working them deeper into his weathered skin. He’s hurting, that’s clear, and a voice rises up in Nicole and hisses, _Good._

The harsh glare of the fluorescent lights sends the room around him into a dizzying blur. She feels like she’s about to throw up, but her throat closes and leaves her with a burning, trapped ball pressing on her airway. She knows she’s losing consciousness, and she vaguely registers Nedley panicking beside her. It doesn’t matter, he doesn’t matter, all that matters is tearing off the fabric that feels like it’s ripping at her skin, to pull off the skin that feels like it’s too small.

She’s got to get out.

Nicole rolls over onto her belly, trying to curl herself up around the pain, but her limbs don’t seem to want to bend that way.

She lifts her head, and the world explodes. There are too many smells and she can’t process any of them, too many noises and they’re all too loud, the whole world is beating against her head and it’s too much to process. Her senses are screaming at her, but they don’t make any sense.

Everything’s different, but it doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter that her legs bunch under her at an angle that should hurt. It doesn’t matter that the scream of rage comes out as a growl. It doesn’t matter that she knows exactly how to leap off the bed, to close teeth that shouldn’t be that sharp around the arm of a man whose name she should know.

It doesn’t matter that she’s forgotten.

All that matters is the rage, and tearing the world around her into shreds until there’s nothing left.

Nothing matters but the prey right in front of her. It doesn’t matter that she’s not fighting a man any more. Fur, skin, hands, paws, she’ll fight them all.

She barely notices the pinch in her hindquarters until a few seconds after, when the world goes black.

//

Next time Nicole comes around, she hears Wynonna yelling.

“They made her one of them! How could you let this happen?”

Nicole stares at the ceiling, and doesn’t have to wait long before Wynonna’s fury fades away.

//

Nicole comes around again.

All she hears is Waverly, crying.

She can’t get to her.

The darkness takes her once more.

//

“I know I’m the last person you want to see right now. But somebody’s got to get you home.”

Nicole sits in Nedley’s car without looking at him, steadfastly ignoring everything but the flicker of buildings as they pass.

She gets out of the car as soon as he stops and makes for her front door. Nedley gets out and comes part way around the hood of the car, but Nicole’s already gone and locked the door in his face.

Only once she’s alone, back against the safety of her front door, does Nicole let the tears come.

Months of lies, at every turn. Every single person she’d met since she’d arrived in Purgatory had lied to her. On purpose, by omission, because they had to, out of loyalty, out of kindness. Nicole can’t separate them right now. The thousands of little lies just whisper to her.

She slides slowly down to the floor, where she wraps her arms around her legs.

It wasn’t a nightmare. It wasn’t something that had fallen randomly out of the chaos of her mind, to seem faded, and half remembered, and even faintly ridiculous come the morning. This was a terror of the conscious mind, very deliberately bent on stripping away every bit of hope, and self, and happiness that she ever thought she could feel again.

A sob wracks her body like a punch to the gut. She can’t hold on to her emotions anymore, she can’t hold onto her body anymore, she can feel the change coming and she can’t fight it, she couldn’t even start to resist.

She’s lost in her own skin, robbed of control over the one thing she’d told herself she could rely on. If she can’t control herself, she’s not who she thought she was. Not anymore.

Her claws dig into the wood of her hallway floor, and she stalks forward, slavering.

She’s a _monster._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Notes About Fucking With Canon:  
> Yes, Banandras has confirmed that in canon, Gus was not blood related to the Earps. However, the change let me open up some more backstory in this AU, and contrast a voluntary choice with a character being trapped against their will.
> 
> As always, thank you for taking the time to read this, and bear (wolf?) hugs to those who have left feedback. You're the people who keep me writing at stupid o'clock in the morning, and I love you. Please don't hate me.


	8. Exit, pursued by a bear.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Nicole tries to cope with the impact of the curse on her life, and finds help from an unexpected source. Wynonna starts down the path of shaky alliances. Waverly wishes it was just another night at Shorty's, but it turns out that her guilt is the least of her problems.
> 
> (Please note, flashbacks in italics)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> _And I heard your final cry_   
>  _Through the dark tonight_   
>  _I'm coming back for you_
> 
> Brother – Rural Alberta Advantage
> 
>  _But, oh, my heart was flawed, I knew my weakness_  
>  _So hold my hand, consign me not to darkness_  
>  …  
>  _I can take the road, and I can fuck it all away_  
>  _But in this twilight, our choices seal our fate_
> 
> Broken Crown – Mumford & Sons

The walls shake inside her head. Her vision blurs, she can barely see. The howls follow her as she runs. They bay for blood, her blood. Her feet bleed and blister, but she still can’t get away. The hair rises on the back of her neck, thick, far too thick. She reaches a wall and thinks this is it, she can escape, if only she can climb it, but her hands are wrong somehow, and she can’t hold on. Every time she tries to pull herself out, she scrabbles uselessly at the brick, and falls back down again. She cries out, but no one answers.

Several loud bangs on the door wake Nicole up from where she’s curled on the couch.

“Nicole Haught, open this door right now!” Chrissy yells.

Grumbling, Nicole gets up, undoes the multiple locks she’d installed, and opens the door a crack. “Whatcha wan’?”

Chrissy knocks the door wide open with ease - Nicole must be worse off than she realized - and marches right in.

The sight that meets her can’t be pretty.

Nicole has been practically living on her couch, nested in front of old reruns. She found them calming, something to keep her temper even and stop the changes from coming.

It doesn’t always work, as the ripped chairs and gouges in the paintwork attest.

She hasn’t seen Calamity since she came back from the hospital. She tries not to wonder what might have happened to her. _Who_ might have happened to her.

Chrissy rips open the curtains window by window with a focused violence, exposing the room to unaccustomed light, revealing abandoned bottles and take-out packages stuffed inside an old Rubbermaid Nicole had optimistically been calling a trash can. Nicole doesn’t see the point in taking care of the place anymore. It never felt like hers, not on the surface, and now she knows it never was. This apartment, this town, was just another place that was supposed to feel like home, but didn’t.

Nicole winces in the light, and the way it forces her to look at her apartment properly for the first time in a week.

It looks a lot like her dad’s place, the last time she visited him, all those years ago.

“Chrissy, I’m on sick leave,” she whines, trying to hide her eyes under a blanket.

“I know, my dad told me.” Around Nicole’s prone form, Chrissy begins to gather up armfuls of bottles, and carries them through into the kitchen.

“Your dad...?”

“Oh, he’s such an idiot! I told him he should have told you sooner.”

Nicole hauls herself up just far enough that she can peer over the back of the couch, just as Chrissy strides purposefully back into the sitting room for another load of Nicole’s mess. Nicole just wishes she would stand in one place: Chrissy’s beginning to make her feel dizzy. “Look, if you’re here to try and get me to talk to him, forget it.”

“I’m not here because of him. I’m here because of you.”

"What would you even know about what I'm going through right now?"

Chrissy huffs, as if Nicole is being particularly dense. In the circumstances, Nicole thinks she’s being perfectly reasonable. After what the Sheriff pulled with her, with her _life_ , she’s got a right to keep her distance. It’s only logical for her to take some time off work, at the very least.

But then logic takes a flying leap off a cliff when Chrissy starts to strip, right there.

Nicole is immediately on her feet. “Chrissy, look, I’m flattered, but - look, stop that, please...”

“You think I don’t get it?” Chrissy snaps, throwing one shoe at the floor in an uncharacteristic fit of pique. “That I don’t understand what you’re going through right now?”

And then, Chrissy shifts.

There’s a bear. A bear. In her living room. A bear.

Nicole scrabbles away, hits the back of the couch and careens over it, ass to the air, caring about nothing but getting away from the three hundred pounds of irritated fur and claw struggling to fit under the low ceiling of her apartment. If she can just get to the hallway, then she can get to her room, and her gun safe...

When she glances around the edge of the couch to check where the bear is, she’s faced with a sight that almost makes last night’s pizza come right back up, all over the carpet.

Chrissy’s shifting back, and Nicole’s transfixed with horror. Shifting’s painful, she knows that too well, but she hadn’t bothered to wonder what it looked like from the outside. Too focused on the inside to care, if she’s being honest.

Chrissy smiles down at Nicole’s stunned expression. "I understand more than you might think..."

Nicole gibbers unintelligibly, apparently forgetting how her legs work until Chrissy comes over and picks her up off the floor.

“Right, I’m getting you out of here. C’mon.”

“But –“

“No arguments. Go pack up some clothes. Stuff you’re not going to miss.”

Nicole does as she’s told. It’s not as if she’s got anything else she’d rather be doing. Or anyone else banging down the door to talk to her.

//

They spend twelve days in the mountains.

The first day, Chrissy drives them to small cabin hidden at the end of a ridiculously pot-holed track, well-plowed despite its remoteness.

“Your dad’s?” Nicole asks, unable to keep the bitter tone out of her voice, nor the scowl off her face.

“No, Uncle Curtis’s. But he and dad and Shorty used to spend a lot of time up here.” At the look on Nicole’s face, she adds, “They don’t actually hunt; barely anyone in Ghost River does. They just... like to get away.”

“Run free,” Nicole says absently, making Chrissy break out in a grin.

“See, it’s good for you! Got your sense of humor back already.”

Nicole isn’t sure she agrees, but she helps Chrissy unload the car anyway.

The bizarrities begin to add up right away.

Instead of putting the food away in the perfectly serviceable cupboards and fridge inside the cabin, Chrissy packs it all in plastic bear barrels that she hoists up a purpose-built metal arch. Inside the cabin, the furniture is fairly standard, rough and wooden, but it’s all been bolted to the floor. When Chrissy unpacks the sleeping bags, she rips off fresh Canadian Tire tags before tossing them on the bunks.

“Wow, you take your camping pretty seriously,” Nicole says.

Chrissy chuckles. “I hate camping. That’s why we’re staying in the nice cozy cabin.”

“Then why all the –“ Nicole waves one arm, trying to indicate the all the gear Chrissy’s brought.

“Oh, that’s for you,” Chrissy replies, as if it were obvious.

For once, Nicole fails to see the connection. Backwoods has never exactly been her thing, either. She never really got the chance to try it.

“Me?”

“Yes, you. Look, the whole point of dragging our asses all the way out here is so that you don’t have to worry. There’s nothing here you can destroy that anyone’s going to miss. There’s no one for miles you could possibly run into. Just you, me, and –“ she rummages in the one cooler she hadn’t transferred to the bear hang “- Captain Morgan here.”

//

Nicole does _not_ feel well when she wakes up on the second day.

Not only is she sporting a killer headache and the worst dry mouth since her academy post-graduation party, someone has zipped her sleeping bag up around her head with her arms pinned down at her sides, a blanket wrapped tight around her torso.

She can’t see a damn thing.

When Nicole tries to get her arms up to find the zipper and get herself out, she rolls out onto thin air.

The floor is not kind when she hits it.

Chrissy appears just as Nicole kicks the sleeping bag away, and laughs so hard she almost drops her coffee mug.

“How’re you doing down there?”

Nicole just groans.

“The hangover’s good,” Chrissy tells her.

“The hangover’s _good_?” Nicole repeats incredulously, finally finding her feet.

“It’ll take the edge off, make you easier to manage. Once you get your legs sorted out, you’ll be faster than me. I don’t want to lose you first day out.”

“Look, Chrissy, I appreciate this, I really do, but can we just do breakfast, or an Advil –“

“Nope. You’ve got to earn your _creature_ comforts.”

Nicole can’t believe it.

Chrissy purposefully gets her plastered, in the middle of nowhere, on an empty stomach, and fucking swaddles her in a sleeping bag, and starts playing games before she’s even had a chance to piss, and there isn’t even a flushing toilet because they’re in the middle of nowhere, and she just needs greasy food and water and to ball up in a corner, and there’s Chrissy standing there so cheerful, and she’s got | _coffee_...

Some small part of Nicole’s brain is jumping up and down, desperately trying to get her attention and explain to her that Chrissy has done all of this specifically to make her angry. Tired and strung out as she is, that sensible part of Nicole has no chance.

Her yell turns into a scream, turns into a howl, turns into a snarl of rage.

In a world of blue, grey, and yellow, Nicole glares up to see Chrissy in front of her, still human, still smiling, and _charges_.

//

Of all the sights in all the world that Wynonna thought she’d see when she tailed Doc to one of his lesser-used warehouses, the one in front of her would be pretty far down the list.

Nedley's standing there looking like he thinks he just stepped out of a western, feet planted and gun raised as if he'd actually shoot it point blank at an unarmed Purgatory citizen's head. He would look faintly ridiculous, with his four-day stubble and beer belly, if it wasn't for the look in his eyes.

This is a Nedley that Wynonna hasn't seen in a long time. This is the Nedley that led a dawn raid on the old distillery the Revenants used to work out of, wearing Ward’s hat and avenging his friend in the only way he knew how.

Doc either doesn't notice the difference, or he doesn't care.

“A little bird told me you happened to come into possession of one of dear old Curtis’s keepsakes. The bones of the Stone Witch’s son?”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Doc chuckles. “You are the most awful liar, Sheriff. Now, I know you came here alone, so you know what happens next. Either you tell me what I want to know, and I let you walk out of here... or you do not. The choice is yours.”

“I need information about Bobo Del Ray.”

“Things must have come to a pretty pass if the honorable Randy Nedley is reduced to making deals with the likes of me. Tell me, how is young Officer Haught?”

“None of your fucking business,” Wynonna spits. She enters behind Doc, but he doesn’t turn, just raises his hands slowly.

“Wynonna. I will confess to being surprised to find _you_ here. Are these sudden and convenient appearances going to become a habit?”

“Only if you keep messing with my people.”

Doc stares at her for a moment, the deep emotionless blue in his eyes holding onto hers, trying to read her. She doesn’t know what he’s looking for; she never knows what he’s thinking.

Then he breaks, and tips his hat at Nedley. “Sheriff, you have my offer. If I may beg a moment with the lady?”

Nedley doesn’t look impressed, but at Wynonna’s nod, he steps out.

“What the hell are you doing, coming after Nedley with the place swarming with Black Badge goons?” Wynonna hisses. “Are you as stupid as you look?”

“You know I am not.”

“Then what the hell do you think you’re doing?”

“I could ask you the very same question. You do know most of the Bandidos would see you strung up in sunlight for what you have done? The alliances you have made?”

“Let me guess, your chivalrous ass is holding back the lynching party.”

“I might be willing to look the other way, if it was to my advantage. You know what I want.”

“Go boil your head in horse piss.”

“Think about my offer,” he advises as Wynonna leaves.

//

Wynonna thumps down into the passenger seat of Nedley’s van and slams the door hard enough to make him wince.

“Nedley - what on earth are you doing out here on your own?”

“Looking for that damn cat of Nicole’s. It ran off on me again, and I don’t want it going back home.”

Nicole. More blood on Wynonna’s hands.

“She hasn’t been back to work. It’s been almost two weeks, maybe if you could just talk to her –“

“No,” replies Wynonna flatly.

“I know you two were starting to get along, and she could use a friendly –“

“No!” Wynonna snarls right his face, fangs snapping inches from his nose. As quickly as it rose up, the rage is gone, and she can find nothing in the hole in her chest but sadness. “We failed her, Nedley. We failed Nicole, just like we failed Sarah. Like _I_ failed Sarah.”

“You didn’t.”

“Yes, I did. And Nicole. And we all just go around pretending like none of it happened, like it’s all somehow okay. We pretend to be scared of death so we can pretend this place hasn’t already killed us.”

To that, Nedley has no answer.

//

"What are you doing here?"

Nedley walks into his office ahead of Wynonna, and she almost walks into him when he stops abruptly in the doorway. She has to nudge him aside to see why: Agent Shapiro’s made herself at home behind his desk, Mark III boots resting comfortably on the corner.

"We need to talk," Shapiro says.

"Get out of my chair!"

"Yeah, get out of his chair," Wynonna adds over his shoulder.

Shapiro raises her hands, palms out, and stands up out of Nedley’s chair. She refuses to move when he rushes over to check that all his drawers are still locked, and just smirks at Wynonna while Nedley bustles around her.

“Don’t worry, your meagre whisky stash is safe from me.”

Nedley rattles the last drawer and steps back, somehow satisfied.

Wynonna is less settled. “If you think you can just barge in and start going through people’s shit –“

“I can do whatever I want.”

Wynonna stares, mouth open, and it takes a moment before she can slam it shut into a clenched jaw of rage. _Arrogant fucking –_

“And that includes going through personnel files. Officer Haught has exceed her maximum allowable sick days.”

“Yeah, a fine job you and your fancy pants did protecting her. You still think you’re the good guys, after what you did to Fish?”

“I did nothing to that man.”

“Oh, so because Dolls threw the punches, you think it’s somehow okay that –“

“Actually,” Nedley interrupts, “the agents had a pretty loud argument about it last night, and I think Dolls got the rougher end of the stick.”

“What?”

“I think Agent Shapiro may be trying to help.”

Shapiro taps one finger to her nose, and points another at Nedley. “A prize for the fat man.”

“Don’t call him that,” Wynonna snaps.

“Would you be so adorably protective if I shared the Bleaker file with the good Sheriff? Those children just disappeared, Wynonna. Never seen again.”

Wynonna glares at Shapiro with all the warmth and friendliness of an avalanche, and her voice comes out low and threatening. “Do that, and I will tear your insides out with my bare hands.”

Shapiro’s own hands fly up in a conciliatory gesture. “Look, I didn’t come here to fight. I came to help. I don’t know Nicole, and I don’t know you. And you don’t know me, and have dozens of reasons not to trust me. But what happened... I’ve seen my fair share of fucked up, and that was well and truly twisted. You’re going to need more than pistols and pep to deal with this.”

“As if your opinion –“ Wynonna starts to growl, but Nedley cuts her off.

“Agent Shapiro has a point. This is heating up, fast, and we could use the extra hands.” He leans back in his chair, and folds his arms. “Okay, impress me.”

//

On the third day, Nicole wakes up in the sleeping bag burrito again, but this time her head is clear of the fabric and she can smell eggs, spitting grease from the little stove.

With far more dignity than the day before, she manages to find the inside tag of the zipper and wriggle her way out, only to dive right back in when she realizes she’s buck naked.

Chrissy laughs. “Nothing I haven’t seen before, you know.”

“What the fuck?” Nicole’s words are heartfelt, and muffled into the sleeping bag lining, and she just wants to disappear out of sheer mortification. “What the _fuck_?”

“You made rags out of your clothes when you shifted yesterday,” Chrissy reminds her as she serves up the eggs. “Just throw on those sweats and come eat while it’s still hot. I promise I won’t peek.”

Nicole risks sticking her head out from under the cover of the bag to see Chrissy is true to her word; she’s sitting in the chair, turned away from the bunk, and is digging happily into her own eggs. Nicole’s mind might want the earth to swallow her up, but her stomach is louder, and wants food now.

She dresses as fast as she can, and falls upon the plate opposite Chrissy.

“Y’know, that’s a good appetite for someone who ate half a deer yesterday.”

Nicole stares at Chrissy in horror, fork frozen halfway to her mouth. She ate a _live animal?!_

Chrissy bursts out laughing again at her dismayed expression. “I’m joking. Joking! Geez, relax. And you better eat up. Shifting takes a lot out of you.”

As Chrissy cleans her own plate up, Nicole stares at the remaining eggs in front of her. Normally she wouldn’t suffer any pang of conscience, having seen the relatively undisturbed life Purgatory’s various barnyard chickens led pretty much wherever they pleased, but this morning she just can’t get another mouthful past her lips.

“You got any oatmeal?”

//

After breakfast, Chrissy takes her out a little ways away from the cabin, to a stand of trees they can hide in. Without preamble, Chrissy strips off her clothes, and gives Nicole a pointed look when she fails to do the same. Fighting down a blush, Nicole reluctantly peels off her sweatshirt and pants, and folds them neatly at the foot of a tree.

_This is ridiculous._

“Sorry about yesterday, but I needed to get you over that hump.” Chrissy tosses her own clothes over a branch. “Gotta say, you gave me a pretty good fight.”

“I didn’t…uh...” Nicole had tried to surreptitiously check Chrissy for wounds all morning, and hadn’t seen any, but that doesn’t mean she didn’t do any damage.

Chrissy laughs. “Cute, but there’d need to be at least five of you to actually get through my hide. Bear, remember?”

“But you weren’t shifted. You were human... shaped.”

“True, but I’ve got a little bit more practice changing on the fly than you do. Which is what we’re going to work on today.”

Chrissy spends the whole day putting Nicole through her paces. She hasn’t felt so clumsy, so bad at something, since her first days at the academy. Being told you don’t know how to dress yourself properly, or walk the way you’re supposed to, is a fairly bruising hit to the ego.

Being shown you don’t even know your own body hits much harder.

The sun is directly overhead before Nicole manages to shift without Chrissy having to make her angry. For a moment, she’s actually in her body, and it’s hers. It’s eerie, and disconnected in the way a leg that’s gone to sleep would feel. Only it’s not just her leg; it’s everything.

Then she falls over.

Everything goes blank again, as it has every time Nicole shifts. No matter what she does, when she slips into the wolf skin, somehow the body takes over her brain, and the memories slip away.

There’s a link there that she’s not getting, a block between herself and the animal that she doesn’t really want to knock down.

They go back to the cabin that evening, exhausted, and make dinner on the little stove. As Nicole helps Chrissy cook, she asks the question that’s been on her mind since Chrissy showed up at her door: “Why are you doing this, Chrissy?”

“Because canned beans taste awful cold.”

“No, not the dinner. Why are you... helping me?”

Chrissy gives the pan a vigorous final stir and lifts it off the flames, dividing it out into two bowls and setting the pan on one side, filled with water, before she answers.

“This place really messes with people. Like, good people. People who care. They get so wrapped up in this stupid curse that they forget who they are and do dumb shit like hire rookie cops who can’t spot a vampire when she’s spitting right in their face.”

“Who’s a vampire?”

“My point is: just because everything has gone tits up, doesn’t mean that we don’t help each other. And you’re one of us now, like it or not.”

//

Rosita knocks the basement door closed with a practiced bump of her hip, hands full with a case of bottles that she humps around to the back of the bar, while Waverly is putting away the bottles from the previous case she’d brought up. It’s nice to have someone to share the heavy lifting with, to giggle about the customers’ drunken antics, and hold the other arm when said customers need helping out the door.

Huffing slightly, Rosita leans on the bar. “We good?”

Waverly sits back on her heels and inspects the line of fridges. “Yeah, that should do for tonight.”

Stacking the bottles in neat rows, labels all perfectly lined up, occupies the churning of Waverly’s thoughts for a little while, but they drift when she moves to tidying the bar top. Waverly doesn’t realize she’s been cleaning the same patch for almost a minute until Rosita coughs gently to break her from her reverie.

“Everything okay?” Rosita asks, with a tone of genuine concern.

For a moment, Waverly considers telling her everything. It’s not as if she can talk to Wynonna about any of it, not if she’s expecting sympathy, and Gus launches into a tirade against Nedley every time the topic comes up. If she knew Rosita better, she might open up, but she doesn’t. Trust never builds quickly in a town like Purgatory.

“Peachy. I’m just... tired.”

Rosita nods, accepting the brush-off, and then heads towards the back tables so that Waverly is alone, front and center, when the doors open. Everyone knows Shorty’s opening hours as well as their own birthdays, and yet every week some a-holes walk in early, expecting to be served.

“We’re closed,” Waverly calls.

“Not to us, you’re not,” says the one in the middle, his grin layered with a promise of violence.

Their clothes are dirty and tattered, and Waverly can smell them even ten feet away, but that’s not what concerns her. Each of them has itchy fingers on the pistols at their belts, and one has a knife drawn.

“Shorty!” she screams, and hears a crash from the back room.

The grin doesn’t shift.

Shorty comes barreling through the door, and Waverly screams again when a shot takes him right in the chest. She starts to twist towards his prone form, but suddenly there’s a gun in her face, and a gun pointed at Rosita’s, and it’s all happening so fast she doesn’t even think to go for her amulet before it’s ripped from her neck.

“Now, we’re going to go for a little drive, and if you come nice and quiet, nobody else needs to get hurt.”

//

Of all the people in Purgatory who could have burst into the Sheriff’s Department with bad news, Wynonna would definitely rank Champ as the undisputed worst.

“They – it’s – the bar – with the glasses –“ he gasps out in between heaving breaths, struggling to get the air back in his lungs.

Wynonna spins lazily on her chair. Sure, something’s got Champ bouncing harder than the day a fifteen-year-old bull spun him off in less than two seconds, but he’s the kind of dude that gets worked up over an unfamiliar sauce on his hotdog. Wynonna isn’t going to get the alarm bells going just because Champ’s got his panties in a twist.

“What is it, rodeo clown?”

“With the beer – and the dish water – and the door was wide open –“

Wynonna is two hot seconds away from knocking some sense into him when Nedley, ever the voice of lawful good, comes out of his office.

“It’s okay, son, take your time. Breathe. Just tell us what you came here for.”

“Waverly. They’ve got Waverly.”

//

_They should have gone._

_Wynonna had been running with the Bandidos for almost a year when Doc sends them to deal with the Bleakers, and all she can keep telling herself as she hears the screams from inside the house is that_ they should have gone. 

_They should have known it was only a matter of time before someone told, before someone broke, before someone noticed the missing children and began to ask questions. Before someone told Doc._

_Secrets don’t keep long in a town like Purgatory._

_The Bleakers knew that, and now they’re paying the price. Their screams just remind Wynonna how damn hungry she is, how damn hungry she always is. It rises up her throat, and she takes a couple of steps back towards the house before she gets a grip on herself._

_Valdez sent her to clear the outbuildings, and won’t be in a sharing mood if Wynonna comes right back in, fangs out._

_Irritation makes Wynonna’s hands twitch in an out of fists, but she turns away again. Goddammit, she needed something dumb and hot yesterday. Maybe if she clears the buildings fast enough, she’ll get a look in on sloppy seconds._

_The kids are in the second shed she checks._

_They're huddled together, scared, but not whimpering: Purgatory's one of those places where kids learn how not to cry. Wynonna knows that all too well. Seven pairs of eyes stare at her, each mutely judging her._

_Wynonna has never felt so seen, so exposed._

_Six of the children are holding sticks, or old spade handles, anything they could find in the shed, clutched tightly in hands that Valdez could cover with a thumb. Wynonna’s eyes drift to the left and catch, like high heels in a grate, on the one little girl not holding a makeshift weapon. She's got long brown hair, and is clutching a stuffed bear._

_The bear is missing an eye._

Fuck. 

_"I gotta take you somewhere safe,” Wynonna tells them. “Right now."_

_The next thing Wynonna knows, she's hijacked the Bleakers’ truck and is tearing down the drive, refusing to look at the enraged, diminishing figure of Valdez in the rearview mirror._

_The kids have gone from silent to full throttle, each trying to ask at least three questions at once. They want to know who she is, where they’re going, if she’s going to feed them. One kid won’t shut up about his dog, and another demands pancakes over and over until she tells him he can have free refills until he pukes._

_Except for the girl with the bear, who sits on the front bench seat next to Wynonna, just staring at her._

_Wynonna glances back, and somehow she’s not seeing that girl anymore. She’s thirteen, in Curtis’s old F-150, bouncing on the bench seat, no seatbelt, hands beating excitedly on the dash. There’s a tug at her shirt, and she looks down. Waverly wants to see, too, but she won’t let go of Mr. Plumpkins to be lifted up._

_The truck hits a pothole, jerking her back to the present, and she forces herself to focus on the road, trying to push away the memories that threaten to drag her down again._

_She should have known herding the kids back into a different barn would be hard, but Wynonna isn't sure she's got the patience to cajole each and every one of them through the door, and loses count of how many times she promises that they'll be safe, that someone will come and take care of them in the morning, that they’ll get pancakes when the sun comes up._

_Wynonna's never been good with children._

_Eventually she does get them all inside, shut behind the big red doors that framed Wynonna’s teenage years._

_Wynonna almost gets away, but Curtis always slept lightly._

_A light whicker of recognition from one of the horses is all it takes to call Curtis out onto the porch, his flashlight catching Wynonna. He's got a shotgun in one hand. The barrel is pointed down, but Wynonna can’t shake the possibility that the man who took her in might be forced to take that shot. To take her out, like an animal._

_The barn door bangs, and the light whips around to the sound._

_The girl with the bear is standing in the entrance, ignoring the piercing beam. When Curtis looks back, Wynonna is gone._

_Leaving the girl with the bear alone, but safe, in the circle of Curtis’s flashlight._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey folks! Sorry it's been so long since my last update. Life has got crazy busy, and is unlikely to ease up anytime some, but I am still working on this, I promise. Please be patient with me and my overworked ass, and go give Smurf some love for always being in my (and everybody else's) corner and propping me up when I flail.


	9. Find someone to carry you.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Waverly’s abduction has the whole town on edge, and this is neither the time nor the place to find a knight on a white horse to save her.
> 
> Content warning: minor character death.

_A million stories that made up a million shattered dreams_  
_The faces of people I'll never see again_  
_And I can't seem to find my way home_  
_'Cause it's almost like_  
_Your heaven's trying everything_  
_To break me down_  
[...]  
_Your heaven's trying everything_  
_To keep me out_

Far From Home - Five Finger Death Punch

 

* * *

 

The floor of the van is coated with a ribbed rubber mat that digs into Waverly’s face. She’s already tried to scrape off the blindfold against a raised edge, and ended up with nothing but a bruised cheekbone for her efforts.

She can hear Shorty groaning somewhere nearby, but she can’t tell exactly where. She thrashes, attempts to get up off her side to try and find him, but every time she thinks she’s close to pushing herself up, the van hits a bump and she ends up sprawled on the floor again.

Her mouth is drying around the cloth used to gag her, and she doesn’t even want to think about where the fabric had been before being shoved in her mouth.

The looped zip ties used to strap her wrists behind her back are digging into her skin.

The thrumming of the engine through the floor is giving her a headache.

The pressure on her shoulder is making her right arm numb.

She can’t see a thing.

Her world narrows to Shorty’s intermittent noises, and the bouncing of the van.

Then it stops. A loud beeping fills her ears, and Waverly is rolled backwards when the van starts to reverse, ending up bundled against the wheel well with Rosita, whose growling is muffled through her own gag. Waverly feels teeth touch her forehead and pulls back instinctively, only to realize it’s Rosita, and she’s pulled Waverly’s blindfold down.

Next to Waverly's own struggling panic, Rosita is tense, ready, muscles like bent willow waiting to snap forward.

They sit trapped in the dark, waiting for the doors to open.

//

The fifth day is the first time Nicole wakes up comfortable and unrestrained.

Chrissy isn’t there.

That’s no reason to panic right away, but Nicole is definitely confused. Up until now, Chrissy’s not let Nicole out of her sight unless she was restrained or thoroughly unconscious. Sure, she feels far more in control than she had that first day, and has even begun to retain memories from her shifts, but she knows she’s got a long way to go.

Nicole dresses, trying not to hurry, then edges out onto the porch. She’s got no idea what she’s going to do if Chrissy is nowhere to be seen – she’s far from comfortable yomping off into the woods on her own in four feet of snow – but fortunately Chrissy is just the other side of the car, muttering into her phone.

A strange sense of calm settles over Nicole. Chrissy’s been the one constant in all of this chaos. Every other time the shit hit the fan in her life, she’s had to come through it alone: her mom; her dad; Shae. Now, in the middle of the biggest pile of guano that’s ever been dumped on her, she finds she’s not alone.

Nicole’s perched on the steps, gently exploring this new bubble of positivity, when Chrissy ends her call and walks over. The look on her face is a pin poised to burst that bubble.

“What’s wrong?” Nicole asks apprehensively.

“Now, I need you to stay calm, okay?”

“Stay calm about what?”

“It’s Waverly. She’s been... kidnapped.”

Nicole doesn’t even feel the change. The four paws pounding along the snow pack really feel as if they’re hers, and she flies along, knowing exactly where she’s going. There’s no discordant thoughts, no conflicting urges, and the sharpness of her senses doesn’t overwhelm her.

For the first time, this body feels like her own, and she knows exactly where she’s going.

A thick copse of trees she would have struggled through on two legs presents no challenge on four. She dodges her way through the trees, head low so the branches whip harmlessly against her back and shoulders, moving so fast she doesn’t have time to notice the obstacles her bunched muscles carry her over by instinct.

She bursts out the other side of the wood and slides out onto the ice, her momentum carrying her until her claws can get a grip, slowing her pace but managing to stay on her feet. Nicole half-slips, half-scrabbles her way across the frozen lake.

Consumed by the driving need to keep running, she doesn’t notice the ice cracking until her world flies upwards, and everything goes black.

//

Nedley has a restraining hand on Wynonna’s arm, and she thinks he must be feeling all kinds of heroically stupid, to try and stop her from going after the dumbfucks that thought they could mess with her baby sister. She’d pull the Rockies down around their heads to get Waverly back. Neither Nedley nor the idiots that took Waverly stand a chance.

“Wynonna. We don’t know who took them, we don’t –“

“I do.”

“You mean, you know who you _think_ took them.”

“Like there’s a fucking difference.”

“There might be. And if you charge into Bobo’s compound without a plan, without backup, you won’t know either way, because they will kill you. And then where will Waverly be?” Wynonna glares at him. She hates it when he’s right. “You don’t have to take this one alone, Wynonna.”

“So it’s you and me, ‘Hi Ho Silver’?”

“Flattering, but I’m not the only cowboy in town.” Nedley nods across the hall, towards the section Black Badge has claimed as their own.

Wynonna bounces over and sticks her head inside the office, unable to stop the grin of relief when she sees a complete absence of Agent Dolls.

“You wanted a chance to prove yourself?” she shoots at Shapiro, who nods. “Saddle up.”

//

“Sheriff, Agent... Earp. To what do I owe this pleasure?” Bobo’s smile never wavers, but his eyes are fixed on Shapiro as she stomps around his trailer, yanking cupboards open and kicking in the door to the bedroom.

“This isn’t a house call, del Ray,” Nedley stops in front of Bobo, who doesn’t bother to get out of his seat. “Three people were abducted from Shorty’s bar earlier today. You know anything about that?”

“Sorry, Sheriff, I can’t help you.”

Wynonna elbows Nedley out of the way to close her hand around Bobo’s throat. “Where’s my sister, you sick fuck?”

“Wynonna!” Nedley chides.

She curses, but releases her grip and takes her frustration out on Bobo’s cabinets instead. The cheap doors splinter and bend inwards.

Bobo grins, the confident crocodile smile of a man who knows he’s done wrong, and is going to get away with it. “I didn’t take them. Didn’t touch a hair on that sweet child’s head. Nothing to do with me.”

Wynonna laughs bitterly. "Sure, like you had nothing to do with what happened with Nicole."

"Just so. How is Officer Haught? Do send her my regards."

This time it’s Nedley who snaps. Bobo’s rictus doesn’t fade as he permits Nedley to cuff his hands behind his back. “Bobo del Ray, you are under arrest.”

“On what charge?”

“The assault of Officer Nicole Haught, you ball of slime,” Nedley growls.

//

The wave of tension that takes over the station as Nedley walks Bobo down the halls is so thick that Wynonna thinks she can almost see it, crawling along the floor in front of his tasseled boots, oozing out ahead of the metal clink of his steps, softened against the linoleum.

Lonnie walks out of the copy room and stops so fast the top half of his paperwork slips off onto the floor. He doesn’t bother to pick it up, just stares as the Sheriff walks the most notorious man in Purgatory down the hall as if he was just another drunk for the tank.

Chambers is on desk duty, and doesn’t even move the first time Nedley tells him to book Bobo. He’d have probably looked less stunned if Nedley had walked in with a dragon on a leash.

“I’ll take it from here.” Dolls lays his hand on the opposite arm of that outrageous fur coat, staring Nedley down over the widening grin on Bobo’s face.

“Like hell you will,” Nedley spits back.

“You don’t have the authority to stop me.”

Peacemaker’s cocking handle clicks from the doorway. “How’s this for authority?”

Wynonna’s pointing the revolver at the floor, more in the vicinity of Dolls’s boots than his vitals, but the threat is clear. A small flick upwards, and Dolls will be able to see down the full twelve inches of the barrel.

 _It’s not as if he knows the damn thing doesn’t work,_ Wynonna tells herself _. Not unless her terrible poker face gives the game away._

“This isn’t a fight you want to start, Wynonna,” Dolls warns.

Wynonna lets the gun drop to her side, and she advances on Dolls, spitting fury. “You want a fight? I’ve been fighting _my whole life_ , while you’ve been sitting pretty on the other side of the boundary, with the assholes who keep us here. Give me one more reason, and I’ll start a war that’ll tear your world apart. You bring your soldiers, your guns, your rules, and I’ll rip them into kindling.”

Shapiro’s head floats into view from Wynonna’s left. “Uh, Wynonna?”

“What?” Wynonna snaps.

“You’ve got whipped cream on your lip.”

//

When the van doors open, Rosita flings herself at the first person silhouetted in the opening, screaming muffled obscenities.

They end up in a tangled mess on the floor, but with her hands bound, Rosita quickly ends up pinned to the ground with two of the orcs sitting on her back, while the third moves forward to greet a man in black tactical gear.

“What took you so long?” the mercenary asks, wrinkling his nose at the smell of the orcs. Behind him, a group of similarly dressed men wait, holding rifles.

“They put up a fight.”

The mercenary looks around him to Waverly, still frozen in place against the wheel well, and the crumpled form of Shorty beyond her.

“I bet.” He beckons forward two of the other mercenaries. “Surrender your weapons.”

“Sam, you can’t let him do this!” One orc springs up from Rosita, livid. “You can take my knife from my dead body!”

“Calm down, Marty,” Sam says wearily, “and give him your knife.”

Once every last knife and rusted pistol has been handed over, a blonde woman, wearing a jacket with shoulder pads that could cut through leather, walks out from between the group of mercenaries. “I am authorized to discuss terms.” She offers him a gloved hand. “Agent Lucado.”

“‘Discuss’?” Sam’s now the one who is outraged. “We were promised passage out of the Triangle, in exchange for three prisoners.”

“Three _intact_ prisoners,“ Lucado clarifies. “That man won’t see tomorrow. He’s useless to us. And the shifter is…volatile.”

 _No, no, no._ She can’t be right. Shorty is going to be fine, Waverly knows that, but she just can’t bring herself to turn around and look.

Marty grabs hold of Sam’s jacket. “They’re not screwing us over, not now!”

Sam shakes him off. “You can get him to a hospital, outside the Triangle. It’s just one bullet, he’ll heal! He’s a fucking shifter, they’re impossible to kill.”

“Not impossible, merely extremely inconvenient. And only when shifted. If you’d shot him in his bear form, his hide would have protected him. But you didn’t. By the sounds of his breathing, I expect he’s punctured a lung.”

“No!” Waverly sobs her denial through her gag, lunging towards Shorty, but Marty grabs her bound arms and pulls her roughly out of the van.

“Careful, Marty,” a voice calls down from the rafters. “You don’t want to knock two down to one.”

Lucado smiles, but only with her mouth. “Tucker. Finally. The voice of reason.”

Tucker comes slowly down the stairs and walks straight over to the captives, looking Rosita over as if she’s the prize bull at the local livestock market. Waverly chokes back the urge to retch, and almost swallows her gag. “I’ll give you the old man - not worth much even without the bullet - but why not her? I would have thought the livelier the better, for what you want.”

“We need the capacity for obedience as well as strength.”

“This town isn’t exactly Pleasantville, you know,” Tucker sighs.

“What about the girl?” Marty demands, yanking Waverly forward. “She’s still good, right?”

Tucker barely blinks as he draws a pistol and shoots Marty in the foot. Marty howls, and lets go of Waverly.

“No one touches Waverly.” Tucker leans down, a grin sliming its way across his face, and strokes her hair. Waverly recoils from the crooked fangs, the sickly pallor of his skin, and then feels a wave of panic rise in the expectation of retribution.

But Tucker just laughs. Laughs, as if it’s all a game. “No one except me.”

“So, we agree,” Lucado says. “These captives are not viable.”

Tucker waves a hand dismissively. “There will be others. I’ll get you your guinea pigs, Agent Lucado.”

“Then do it soon. We grow impatient.”

“Keep them here until I get back,” Tucker orders as soon as Lucado and her henchmen have left. “Shoot the shifters if you have to, but I want Waverly intact.”

When the chain rattles on the door, sealing them in, all Waverly can think, over and over, is how could she just let this happen. How could she have done nothing.

//

There’s no reason other than the rage singing in Wynonna’s ears that leads her to assume Bobo is behind the kidnapping, but she can’t do nothing. She can’t leave Waverly behind, not again.

She stands on the law’s side of the table for the first time in her life, and tries to keep her voice level. Control has never been Wynonna’s strong point, and it’s stretched to the breaking point seeing Bobo lounging in the metal chair, as relaxed as if he was drinking a beer on his porch.

“If you don’t start talking, I’m gonna eat you raw and spit you back out.” Bobo raises one eyebrow, a smirk slowly spreading across his face. “Not like that, dammit.”

“Flattering as the offer is, you’re still not my type.”

“And I can think of a thousand ways I’d rather spend my Saturday night, but here we are.”

“Only a thousand?” Shapiro mutters from the corner.

Wynonna glares briefly at her. _That is not helping_. “Tell me what I need to know.”

“So formal. It’s not like we’re strangers, you and I. I knew your daddy well.”

“Well enough to kill him!” Wynonna wishes she could bite back the outburst as soon as it’s out. She can feel her control slipping, too fast to stop, and she knows Bobo is just loving watching her squirm, the asshole, as if he’s the one doing the interrogating.

Bobo shrugs; not denying it, but as if he thinks the detail is trivial. “And now you need me to help you find your baby sister.”

“You might be a piece of shit, Bobo, but you’re the piece of shit that knows everything that happens in this town. And you’re not getting out of here until you spill your guts, one way or another.”

“You and me, Wynonna, we know how to survive. You think your Black Badge lackeys will come through for you in the end? That your big, brave teddy-bears will save the town?” Bobo jerks forward, his hands slapping the table at the limits of his cuffs. “You need me, Wynonna. Sooner or later, you’ll figure that out. Sooner would be better – at least, for your ‘friends’.”

“Don't pretend like you give a crap about what happens to anyone but yourself."

"We both have people we need to protect. There is so much more going on here than even you know about."

“And now with the cryptic. You’re wasting my time.”

Bobo kicks the table leg. "Because you are fighting the wrong enemy! You're so hellbent on coming after me and mine that you don’t even realize there’s a bigger picture to see. That’s the problem with you Earps. So wrapped up in your own dramatics, you don't even bother to think who else might get caught in the crossfire."

Shapiro groans theatrically from her corner. "Yes, everybody's got a whole shop full of violins. Can we just cut the crap and get to the part where you two make a deal?"

“I would never-”

“A truce,” Bobo cuts in. “Give me a truce, and I'll tell you what you need to know.”

A truce. With the man who killed her family, the man who tore the county apart with feuds, the man who brought Black Badge down around her ears, the man who attacked Nicole…

Who is Wynonna trying to kid? This is Waverly. All of the souls in Purgatory wouldn’t tip the scale when her baby sister hangs in the balance. There’s nothing she wouldn’t do, and no lines she wouldn’t cross.

Wynonna nods. “You have your truce. If - _if_ \- your information leads to Waverly. And if they’ve harmed her-”

“They won’t. Orcs aren’t generally known for their long-term planning, but they’re up to something. Past few months, they’ve been moving people and cargo through a couple of warehouses. _Living_ people. I’ve been keeping a watch on them, unlike these idiots who call themselves lawmen.”

Shapiro slams a pad and a pencil down in front of him, and Bobo scribbles out an address on the edge of the county line.

“Run along now, before it’s too late.”

//

“I _told_ you to bring bolt cutters.”

“Why the hell would I have bolt cutters in my car?”

“That's why I told you to bring some.”

Waverly head snaps up. That sounds like-

Three gunshots ring out against metal, and the doors slide open with violent speed.

Backed by the streetlight, Wynonna and Shapiro stand in the doorway, weapons drawn. Waverly can’t help the grin that bursts out over her face. _Wynonna came for her! For_ her _!_

_But why are they just standing there?_

Shapiro side-glances at Wynonna. “So, you think we should take them?”

“Yeah, now would be a good time to attack,” Wynonna agrees.

She levels Peacemaker at Sam, and the action clicks forward with a definite lack of explosion.

“Donkey nuts!” Wynonna yells, struggling to reset the cocking handle.

Rolling her eyes, Shapiro fires off two bullets, hitting Marty in the shoulder before the orcs charge.

Thirty feet is nothing to an orc with its temper up, and although Shapiro gets off another two shots before they close, it makes little difference.

Wynonna gives up on getting Peacemaker to actually work, and just flings it at Sam, hitting him in the forehead. While he’s dazed, she springs at him with a triumphant yell, carrying them both to the ground.

Gary barrels towards Shapiro, who dips into a fighting stance so very different to Wynonna’s freeballing rush. She meets him with practiced moves, flowing into the fight with the same focused calm Waverly associates with yoga class.

Waverly has a brief moment to be impressed that an outsider can hold her own against an orc, before she finally registers that Rosita’s been calling her name.

While Waverly’s sitting there, stunned, Rosita has been trying to cut her bindings free against anything she can find - the van, a grate in the floor - but she’s done nothing but rub her skin raw. She holds up her wrists, and makes urgent noises through her gag.

But before Waverly can begin scooting over towards Rosita, Wynonna screams.

Waverly’s head snaps around, and realizes everything has changed.

Shapiro is steadily being backed into a corner. Marty knocked Wynonna off of Sam, and there’s a wound flowing freely at her shoulder, but Waverly can’t see who has the knife.

Wynonna spits blood. “Waverly! Run!”

And just like that, it wasn't Wynonna telling her to run.

It was Mama.

It was Mama, and she was six all over again, and Mama didn't tell them to run very often, no matter how loud the yelling got, or how hard Daddy hit. Waverly might only be six, but she knew when Mama told them to run, that was it. They had to run, because they were running for their lives.

Waverly tried to run, but even her legs felt like they had when she was six, hard to move and too short, and she was slow; too slow.

They say you can't outrun a bear, but you don't have to. You just have to outrun the person you’re with.

Willa and Wynonna could always outrun Waverly.

But Wynonna isn't twelve, and she isn't running any more.

She came back; she came back for _Waverly_. How can Waverly leave her now? Even if everyone else has given up on Wynonna, after what she's become.

Shorty. Nedley. Gus.

Even Curtis eventually did.

But Waverly just can't. She's tried to, all these years. But she _can't_.

As she hears the fists hit flesh, back and forth, she can’t shake that six-year-old terror, the memory from when they were both so little, when Wynonna took a beating for her while she hid under the bed with Mr. Plumpkins.

And she just... can't. She can't leave her here.

So she goes back.

The knife is dull and awkward, but it’s the only one she can see. It takes far too long to get through Rosita’s bindings, and Waverly whimpers every time she hears a hit land home, but eventually Rosita is free and slashes through Waverly’s restraints.

Rosita yanks the gag off and snarls, “You’re in for it now, fuck-faces.”

There’s a tearing of fabric, and four clawed paws carry Rosita towards the fight.

Sam ends up with forty pounds of enraged wolverine on his head, doing her level best to conduct a lobotomy through his ears.

It should be one against one now, but Wynonna’s still down, and Marty’s fists aren’t tiring -- he’s _laughing_ \-- and Waverly doesn’t know what to _do_. She’s not a fighter, she’s never thrown a punch in her life, she can’t _help_...

_Not without her talisman._

Muttering nonsense prayers under her breath, Waverly dives into the cab of the van. Even if Sam kept hold of her talisman, maybe there’s a gun, or something... anything… She yanks the glove compartment open, and could cry in relief for the stupidity of orcs. Nestled between empty cigarette packets, the little bird her mother wore sits, waiting.

Talisman clutched in her right hand, Waverly finds her feet again, facing the fight. The blood is pounding right behind her eyes, and she’s never had to focus like this, never managed to channel power when she can feel herself trembling.

The magic that comes on the back of her anger has only ever caused more pain.

Slowly, she raises her left hand, and tries to draw in a deep breath. _Use what’s already there,_ Gus had told her. _Just give it a little nudge, and let it work for you._

_The streetlight!_

It glows, and then hums, and then bursts out of the glass, whistling with the force that sends it pinwheeling into Marty’s back.

It’s over before Waverly can remember how to lower her hand.

Wynonna and Rosita have blood soaking down their faces and chests, while Shapiro quietly pockets her pistol. Waverly helps Wynonna up off the floor, almost dropping her again when a crow swoops down from its perch on the warehouse rafters, cawing loudly as it glides out the open door.

Shapiro is the first to move, striding directly to the open door of the van. She stares into it, then looks back to Wynonna.

She shakes her head.

//

Nicole doesn’t open human eyes again until the seventh day.

She wakes up, wrapped in blankets, on a mattress dragged off one of the bunks and placed a few feet in front of the roaring stove.

Next to her is a large brown bear, curled up with the damp rising off her coat in a cloud of steam. The door is still intact, and there’s no obvious bear-shaped holes in the walls, so it must be Chrissy.

Nicole fights her stiff limbs until she’s sitting up, and can get a good look at Chrissy. She hasn’t seen her shifted since that first day, in her house: not with human eyes, at least. The memories from Nicole’s shifts are still mostly blocked off, giving her only brief flashes, as if it all happened a long time ago.

Three hundred pounds is the low end of the grizzly scale, but Chrissy looks far from small, curled up as if she’s a sixty pound dog. Hell, she’s bigger than the stove.

Nicole has no idea how you safely wake an adult bear.

“Chris. Chrissy,” she hisses from the shelter of her nest.

That gets no reaction, so Nicole reaches out a blanket-covered foot to gently nudge a shoulder bigger than her head. Chrissy grunts, and sleepily swipes a paw like a sledgehammer at the irritation.

Nicole decides she’d rather keep everything attached, and wriggles her way out of the blankets without letting any errant limbs disturb the sleeping bear. She’s shaking a little, and unpleasantly dizzy. Time is fuzzy, and she’s not sure how long it’s been since she last ate. There’s a fresh bandage on her right forearm, covering the wound she thought had healed a week ago.

Keeping one blanket to wrap around herself – she’s still not fully on board with Chrissy’s casual nudity, and chilled despite the fire – Nicole totters over to the fridge.

She’s bent over, having an internal debate over hummus versus an actual hot meal, when there’s a roar behind her.

A grizzly roar is _not_ designed for small spaces.

Nicole first falls into the fridge, and then rebounds to the floor, terrified and clutching her already sore head. Behind her, the bear has risen to its feet, towering over her, and Nicole has completely forgotten that it’s Chrissy.

The horribly familiar tingle of her shift begins, and Nicole wants to scream, but then the bear shrinks back into her friend and, thankfully, the change fades with her terror.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Chrissy yells.

Nicole just gibbers. She thinks she’d rather have the roaring bear back over naked, yelling Chrissy.

“Sit down, and give me your toes.”

Nicole gets control back of her shaking body, and does as she’s told. “I- I’m sorry, Chrissy. I wasn’t thinking.”

“No, you weren’t.” Chrissy grabs a needle and one of Nicole’s feet, and begins to jab her toes in sequence. “She’s my _best friend_ , Nicole. You don’t think I want to go back, too? To help?”

Nicole hangs her head. _Of fucking course_. She’s been so damn selfish, so wrapped up in her own pain, she hadn’t wanted to think about anything else. “You- you should go. I’ll be fine.”

“No, you won’t.” Chrissy swaps feet and, if anything, jabs harder. “You are _such_ a dumbass.”

“Ow! What’re you doing that for?”

“You ran yourself into a lake. Twice. I had to knock you out to get you back here, and it’s a wonder you haven’t died of hypothermia.” Chrissy drops Nicole’s foot, checks her bandage is still tight, and then glares at her. “Now get back in your blankets and _stay there_. I’ll bring you something hot.”

//

Chrissy keeps her inside for another two days before she’s satisfied Nicole’s recovered enough to go out again.

It takes Nicole all morning to find the balancing point that will tip her over into the shift without sending her tearing southwards over the snow.

Every time she gets too close to something too hot – Nedley, Waverly, this whole damn town – she drops it immediately, staggering into the nearest tree for support.

She can’t go rogue again. She needs to let the anger rise, but not boil over.

Eventually, she finds it. She looks up at Chrissy, waiting patiently, ready to shift when she does, and realizes that beyond the fur and chaos, there’s a tiny point of stability she’s never known before. A friend, in a way she’s never had.

All her life, she was on the outside looking in. Different, new, unwanted; somehow not enough, no matter how hard she tried. She always swore she’d never let it turn her mean, never follow her father’s boot prints...

Beyond her anger, she could almost see the cold of the snow immediately in front of her muzzle, the bursts of sweat and wood smoke where their passing had disturbed the sharp, clean canvas.

All she can do is stand there, quivering, resisting the desire to tear off southwards.

Chrissy bumps her muzzle gently against Nicole’s flank, and saunters off in the opposite direction from the one Nicole so desperately wants to go in. At the edge of the clearing, Chrissy stops, and her large head turns to look at Nicole, a tentative invitation designed to test her fledgling control.

On shaking legs, Nicole follows.

//

By the eleventh day, Nicole can slip between skins by choice.

//

On the morning of the twelfth day, Chrissy decides Nicole is ready to go back. She’s just at the end of the phone line, they can come back out whenever Nicole needs to, but she can’t hide in the mountains forever.

So Nicole finds herself standing in front of the station, staring up at the sign she’d been so excited to work under the first time she saw it. Now it does nothing but deepen the sickening sensation in her stomach.

“Let’s go.” Chrissy strides past her, looking more like herself in a skirt and clacking heels.

Nicole stares at her, lightly stunned. “What do you mean?”

“I’m coming in with you.” Chrissy scoffs gently. “Bitch, you really think I’m letting you go in there alone?”

For the first time in three weeks, Nicole cracks a smile.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So, yes, I am still here! Slow like the proverbial tortoise, or maybe a snail. I like the idea of carrying my home on my back. Anyway, if you're still here, thank you for reading, and, as always, the greatest of gratitude to @iamthegaysmurf. Your support and wisdomousness are irreplaceable. 
> 
> BEARS.


	10. Hell is empty, and all the devils are here

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A pause in the storm: time to regroup, and mourn what's been lost.

_Well, I was there and I saw what you did, I saw it with my own two eyes_

_So you can wipe off that grin, I know where you've been_

_It's all been a pack of lies_

In The Air Tonight – Phil Collins

 

_There is whisky in the water_

_And there is death upon the vine_

_And there is grace within forgiveness_

_But it's so hard for me to find_

Black Sun – Death Cab For Cutie

 

* * *

 

The only good thing Wynonna can say about the butcher’s is that the cool of the walk-in freezer eases the throbbing of her wounds.

She hates everything else about the place.

There was something about moving between the hanging halves of beef, the strange way the muscle stretched out without the skin to cover it, that bypassed Wynonna’s compartmentalization of killing. Burgers on a plate were completely devoid of any connection to an animal. The deaths that trail after Wynonna, plaguing her guilt, are too much to face. A friend in a coffin was sanitized, sacred, and somehow so much more than frail meat.

Here, death just was -- without any trappings, without a story to cover it. This death was clean, and calm, and emotionless. Come tomorrow, Shorty’s funeral would be anything but.

“I don’t know how you can stand the stench,” Wynonna says.

“The smell of blood does not affect me as strongly.” Doc pushes a carcass gently out of the way, making it creak on its hook. “After all these years, everything starts to fade.”

“And yet here you still are, making trouble.”

If Wynonna were feeling optimistic, she’d say Doc’s smirk was almost wistful. “That aspect of my character used to appeal to you.”

It would be a lie if she said it didn’t any longer. Wynonna just has bigger fish to fry these days, and more people looking to her to feed them.

“That’s not what we’re here to talk about,” she replies, and could almost kick herself for how lame the words sound, hanging there between them.

“My offer has not changed since we last spoke.”

“Look, I don’t give two shits about you and those magic bones. I don’t have them, and I don’t care who does. All I care about is getting everyone to take a chill pill long enough to get the suits off our backs. I’ve got Bobo on board, but I need you to agree, too. I know what you really want. To get out of this, just like the rest of us.”

“You have no idea what I want,” Doc growls. He then lifts the hat off his head to examine the inside, carefully removing a few stray hairs as he settles his expression. “Say I do agree to this, and you and I came to an accord. Which side do you take in a conflict between Bobo and I?”

Honestly, the thought hadn’t occurred to Wynonna. Since when had she become the mediator in this war? Normally she was the one starting fights, not fixing them. “Well, maybe we can figure out something between you and Bobo. Split the county up or something.”

“That is never going to happen,” Doc says flatly. “If you think I have crossed lines, that is nothing compared to the transgressions that cur has committed, and has continued to do so despite your little ceasefire.”

“It’s been two days. Whatever you think he’s done–“

“Valdez found Morrison’s body last night. Hit and run. _Bobo’s_ work.”

The news knocks the words out of Wynonna’s head. She’d left Morrison behind when she left the Bandidos. After all he’d done for her, she’d left. Hadn’t even told him she was going. She thought he’d be fine. He was always so calm, so tough. She knew he could look after himself.

Now he’s another mark on the casualty board.

“Do you have proof?” she asks with a shake in her voice.

“No. But I know it was Bobo’s men.” He points his hat at her to emphasize his words. “No one else would dare.”

“So you don’t know.” Wynonna sucks in a deep breath to steel herself, and wishes the smell of fresh blood didn’t flush her system when she does so. If there’s anything that’s going to make it harder to keep her focus, it’s that hunger. “Look, we’re all wasting our time fighting each other when we could be trying to get ourselves out of this shithole. I hate this curse, too, but–“

“Hate?” Doc laughs. “You think you _hate_? I would rip apart every person in this county, limb from limb, if it would set me free from this curse. You think you know suffering? You have no concept of what that word means. You do not know the meaning of hate. When you have lived in the shadow of this curse for a hundred years, then you can come and speak to me of hate.”

“Fine. Be dramatic. Just so long as you stay out of this.”

“The deal is the same as it’s always been. Stay out of my business, and I will keep clear of yours.”

“And Gus? Nedley?”

“That is entirely in your hands. Bring me that skull, and all your sins will be forgiven.”

Wynonna scoffs. As if Doc, of all people, could find absolution.

“Do not dare try and take the moral high ground with me, Wynonna Earp. I know what your sins are. I always told you there was a power in killing, a drug you have tasted, and I can see in your eye the thought of tasting it again is not far from your thoughts.”

“You’re wrong.”

“I have never been more right. You are just like me, and as long as you fight it, you’ll always be lonely.”

“I’m not lonely,” Wynonna lies. “I just prefer to hunt alone.”

“Suit yourself.” Doc replaces his hat with a light touch and a mocking smile, and walks away, leaving Wynonna with a seething rage.

He always was gasoline to her fire.

//

Wynonna found, years ago, that the world only swims into focus from the bottom of a bottle. Being sober was like constantly living in a white room with fluorescent lights on: everything was brilliantly lit, but it hurt her eyes so badly she couldn’t look at any of it. Not properly. The whiskey took the sharp edges out of the world, and let her move without getting cut by the never-ending failures trooping through her head.

Alcohol made the world quieter. Bearable.

It let her live without the guilt for a while. Doc was right, in his way. The only other thing that shut off her brain was the violence, and she’d much rather send innocent bottles marching off to the recycling plants than bodies to the morgue.

The only thing was that the whiskey didn’t just turn down the dial on the pain.

It took her control, and every time, she wakes up with some new bruise or new regret to nurse. More things she just wants to forget, every time she tries to purge her memory.

It’s far from the first time she’s been thrown out of a Purgatory bar, and it sure won’t be the last. Normally Shorty would have found a quiet spot in the basement, with enough to keep her down until sun-up, but he's gone. Never coming back. Maybe she shouldn't, either.

If someone would just put her in the ground, too, everyone would be better off. Waverly definitely would be.

She could do it herself. If she just laid down, here in the street, and waited for sunrise...

A halo of red appears at the top of her fuzzy vision, but it’s not the dawn. It’s Nicole, upside-down, and unimpressed.

“I should have known ‘drunk and disorderly’ would mean you, Wynonna.”

Wynonna looks up at the hat on Nicole’s head. Same shape, different color, and she hears Doc’s mocking tones echoing in her ears. _You are just like me_.

“Oh, great. The judgment parade.”

“Look, I know you and Waverly are going through a hard time right now–“

Wynonna picks herself up off the ground on the second attempt. “You seem awful interested in me and my sister. Bobo set you onto us?”

“What?” There’s nothing but a look of stunned confusion on Nicole’s face, but through the haze, Wynonna isn’t really seeing what’s there, right in front of her.

“You’re one of his now. One of his wolves. How do I know you ain’t working for him now? That he’s got you under some kinda thrall, or pack boss alpha thingy...”

Now, Nicole’s face hardens. “Wynonna, that’s ridiculous.”

“So’s not showing up for work for two weeks.” Wynonna waves a finger, intending to poke Nicole in the chest, but missing wildly. “Or your house, or anywhere. You just vanished without a reason – unless that reason was you were at Bobo’s camp–“

“I was with Chrissy,” Nicole interrupts through gritted teeth. “Go ask her yourself, seeing as you clearly don’t believe a word I’m saying.”

“I’ve had a whole lifetime of learning not to trust wolves, _Officer_ ,” Wynonna drags out the last word in a sarcastic drawl that makes Nicole’s fingers clench reflexively at her belt. “Just let me mourn Shorty in peace, won't you?”

“I’m not trying to intrude. You just can’t be staggering down the middle of Main Street, clearly intoxicated.”

“So what? You gonna book me? Throw me in the drunk tank?”

“No, I’m not going to arrest you, Wynonna. Just... just go home.”

 _Home_. Wynonna wishes she could say she had one.

She’s got figure out how to repair the things other people broke inside her, but she has nothing to seal the pieces back together with, and she can’t quite find them all…

//

 _The universe always had the worst timing_ , Nicole reflects when she sees Bobo sitting on the hood of her car.

He bangs his heels on the fender and grins at her. It’s obvious that he’s trying to provoke her, and the broiling rage in her chest would like nothing more than to let him; to let loose. A week ago, she knows she would have.

Today, she just sighs wearily. “What do you want, Bobo?”

“What do _I_ want?” Bobo laughs. “It doesn’t matter what I want. What matters is what I can do for you.”

Nicole’s impatience, already tested to breaking point, whines with the strain as Bobo slowly pulls out a cigarillo, lights it, and taps out the first ashes on her car. The last thing she wants right now is to listen to someone else tell her what they think she should be, but she’s not going to give Bobo, of all people, the satisfaction of making her control snap.

“You may not see it now, but you have been given a gift. A rare and precious gift, you could do something great with it. You–“ he points the cigarillo at her, “-could change this town, change everything, if only you knew how to use the wolf within. To embrace it. I could show you.”

“Look, Bobo, you’re barking up the wrong cactus. I don’t want anything to do with you, or your gang, and we might not be able to prove it was you that attacked me, but I _can_ book you for disorderly conduct. Now get the hell off my car and let me get on with my job.”

Bobo slides off the hood and throws his hands up theatrically, pantomiming a surrender that has no honesty to it. “As you wish. Run along and be a white knight. I am so _very_ excited to see how that works out for you.”

//

Second shift back on the job, and she’s already had to text Chrissy for an emergency support coffee. Nicole would beat herself up for being so pathetic, if she had any space left in her head for a larger pity party.

She can’t bring herself to tell Chrissy about Bobo. Not with Wynonna’s accusations ringing in her ears. Unfortunately, that’s not the only thing bothering her.

“Why would Nedley do this?” she blurts out, when Chrissy prompts her to share _why_ she brought her here. “Why would he drag me into all of this, knowing what would happen?”

“Because he didn’t know you. Look, you don’t know this town -- not really, not yet. It… does things to people.”

“”Does things”? You mean that curse?”

“Yeah. I mean, look what it did to you.”

Nicole groans into her palm. “Yeah, I’m a monster now. Already got that memo today from Wynonna.”

“Honey, you’re not _that_ special.”

“Thanks, Chrissy.”

“No, I mean – hell, everyone here is cursed. _Everyone_. Of course, you know about me, and my dad, and Shorty. Obviously, the idiots that turned you, and Wynonna–“

“Wynonna?!” _How had Wynonna not said anything?_

“She’s a vampire. You didn’t know?”

Nicole bobs her head, shrugging one shoulder. _Takes a monster to know one_ , she guesses. “Now that you actually say it, it makes a lot of sense.”

“Yeah, no shit, Sherlock.”

“And…” Nicole sucks in a breath. She has to ask, but she’s not sure if she wants to know. “And Waverly?”

“Waverly’s a witch.”

//

Waverly is currently cursing at the beer taps, under Wynonna’s skeptical eye.

“It’s a funeral, Waves. Everyone’s gonna be drinking whiskey.”

“They’re going to be drinking moonshine soon, if Black Badge keeps blocking every bottle. And it’s not just the booze. There’s no fresh fruit, and I can’t get anything but the really crappy No Name tofu at the store anymore, and Rosita is still in the hospital so Chrissy and Steph are going to be waitressing today. Gus can’t come at all because she’s at City Hall fighting for the bar. I mean, Shorty’s will says it goes to her, but Cryderman is claiming it can’t ‘cause it’s on public land, and it’s all going wrong, so wrong.”

“I know, babygirl,” Wynonna reaches across the bar to grab one of Waverly’s flailing hands before the rag in her hand gets thrown across the room. “I know. It’s rough. We’ve been working ourselves stupid trying to get a whole lot of nowhere.”

“Maybe not nowhere.” Waverly says in a small voice. “I’ve been digging through the records for information on Devil’s Gap–“

“Do what now?”

“That creepy little ghost town the Blacksmith took me to? Showed me Constance cursing Wyatt?”

“Oh, yeah.”

“Well, I found a few records of people that owned land around there. Most of the names I don’t recognize. They must have moved away, or the family died out. But there was one name: Gardner.”

Wynonna’s jaw hits the bar top, and her fist clenches around her whiskey glass, fighting the temptation to shatter it entirely. “Fucking Tucker. That slimeball.”

“So you agree? You think he might be on the same trail we are?”

“I agree he needs a swift knee to the small and vulnerables,” Wynonna grumbles.

“Whoever you’re talking about, I’m sure he deserves it, and I really hope it’s not me.”

Wynonna whips around on her bar stool to come face to face with a hesitant, but genuine, smile.

“Perry!” she yells, a little too loudly. The poor man startles, and glances about as if afraid the few early arrivals at the wake might zero in on the noise.

“Hey, Wynonna. How are you?”

Wynonna glances at Waverly, who’s sporting the same stunned look of disbelief Wynonna knows she’s wearing. “Not too good, Perry. Kinda bummed out about Shorty.”

“Oh, yeah, sorry.” Perry seems to zone out staring at her whiskey glass for a moment, then snaps back to the present. “I really am sorry for your loss, Wynonna. He was a good man.”

“Thanks,” Wynonna says hesitantly.

“Look, I’ve been meaning to ask...” he starts, but whatever he was going to say fades away when the door to Shorty’s bangs open again, and Dolls and Shapiro walk in, looking distinctly out of place. Perry takes off to the other side of the room without a backwards glance.

“Well, that was weird.” Wynonna spins back round to face Waverly, still a little bemused. “I didn’t even know he was back in town.”

“Last few months, actually,” Waverly replies. Of course she knew that. Waverly’s a walking encyclopedia of the entire population of Purgatory, while Wynonna struggles to remember the postman’s name. “He even went on a couple of dates with Chrissy. She said he was ‘Weird, like jittery’.”

Wynonna leans in. _Now_ she’s interested. “Like guilty got-ties-to-bad-shit jittery, or done-a-whole-lot-of-drugs jittery?”

Waverly shrugs. “Who knows. You think we should investigate him?”

“Him and every other dude in this town, but I think we got bigger problems than a hunk like Perry going a few cards short of a deck. Speaking of problems.” Wynonna directs her last comment at Shapiro, who’s come to lean on the bar in search of her own whiskey. “So when are we gonna get Shorty’s body back? Gus keeps muttering about wanting to ‘bury him decent’.”

“She’s going to have to get in line: Black Badge was after his corpse.”

Wynonna stares at Shapiro, fighting down the urge to knock her across the nearest table. Her words are forced out between clenched teeth, threatening to become fangs. “You didn’t give it to them, did you?”

“Nothing to give them. Turns out the orcs had been trafficking explosives, and people was just a part-time gig. The warehouse burned to the ground. Nothing left to send.”

Funny, that, when there wasn’t any report of a fire, and Wynonna hadn’t seen any kind of explosives in the warehouse. That fire must have been set deliberately, and smart money is on Shapiro.

Wynonna smiles, and manages to murmur something like _thanks_. “Looks like there’s hope for you yet,” she tells Shapiro.

“Not me. It was Dolls’s idea.”

Wynonna gives her a quizzical look, struggling to believe that Dolls, of all people, would flout the rules so flagrantly. Shapiro just shrugs, apparently bemused by such complex human interaction, and wanders off in search of something more interesting.

//

It was different from Curtis’s wake.

Waverly had never even seen Curtis’s body.

The people she’s known all her life mill around the bar, holding onto their drinks instead of each other. Waverly looks around, and knows that the comfort she’d never quite realized she wanted is missing.

She busies herself with tidying away glasses abandoned on the bar, still looking around Shorty’s – _the bar_ – at all the faces, pretending she isn’t looking for the one face she can’t find. Hunting for the arms she wishes were holding her, instead of running her own hand up and down the opposite bicep.

But Nicole isn’t there, and Waverly doesn’t know what she’d do if she walked in the door right now and offered to hold her again.

She can’t let her mind go there. Waverly doesn’t want to remember all the reasons why Nicole isn’t there, when she already feels like the weight of everything that’s happened could bear her through the floor into the basement.

Nicole isn’t there, and she’s surrounded by strangers in the town she’s lived in all her life.

So Waverly retreats to the back room, carrying a half-empty tray of dirty glasses, desperate for the scant few moments alone it buys her.

When she comes back in, Nicole is there.

Waverly sees her the second she steps out the door. With her hat respectfully clutched in both hands, Nicole’s hair stands out even more than usual. She’s exchanging pleasantries with Ruthie, passing the time of day as calmly as if nothing out of the ordinary ever happened in the little town of Purgatory. But the clipped tapping of her fingers around the brim, the stiffness in her shoulders, the way her eyes keep flicking off Ruthie and towards the exit...

Waverly can’t breathe. She can barely stay standing.

She’d been fighting it back for so long, refusing to open that little box in her mind, but seeing Nicole had just broken it wide open. She’d let that happen. She’d said nothing, and let her world snuff out the brightest light she’d ever found.

So Waverly runs, out the back door and into the alley and down the road, and she doesn’t even really know where she’s going until she almost runs into one of the few faces in Ghost River County that she hasn’t seen every day of her life.

Jeremy keeps his coffee in a thermos shaped like a transformer, and the ill-fitting lid lets the coffee wash over his front when Waverly bumped into him.

“Oh, Jeremy, I am so sorry...”

“No, it’s okay, it wasn’t hot, I’m fine.”

“But- but your coat...”

“My lab coat? Oh, that’s nothing, I’ve got about five. This is actually the one with the sweet-and-sour stain on the sleeve, so I probably should have swapped it already, I mean takeaway Chinese food doesn’t exactly scream professional with good lab practices, but it’s the one I was wearing when we finally programmed an e-coli strain to express the ATF1 enzyme, so it’s kind of lucky and also smells nice, so–“

“Sorry? You got e-coli to...?” Waverly wipes a tear from her cheek, a motion Jeremy thankfully seems to miss.

“Oh. We made it stop smelling like poop, and instead– never mind, it’s not important.”

“No, it is.” To Waverly, it’s a small piece of driftwood to cling to in an otherwise roiling sea. “What did you make it smell like?”

“Banana.”

“Banana?”

“Yeah. I know, it’s stupid, but–“

“It’s _genius_.” To her surprise, Waverly actually laughs, and Jeremy looks stunned, but then grins back at her.

Down the street the rest of the town says farewell to Shorty in true Purgatory fashion, drinking away the afternoon, but Waverly finds her solace in the coffee shop, listening to Jeremy natter over the cooling replacement drink she insists on buying.

//

The wake is due to continue until three, but Nicole can’t stay. Beyond the need to get away from the curious and pitying eyes, she’s still got a pile of work far larger than the hours left in the day, and she hasn’t even had lunch yet.

There’s a paper-wrapped sandwich waiting on her desk when she walks back in.

_Chrissy._

The soft shoe shuffle she hears coming down the hallway, however, isn’t Chrissy’s step. Chrissy walks quickly, her feet snap against the ground in a staccato rhythm. These footsteps are steady, well-paced, well-worn soles brushing the linoleum floor with an easy familiarity.

Nedley.

Nicole’s been getting her orders second-hand through Chambers. It was easier, calmer. Every time she knows Nedley is in the building, every time she smells the distinctive odor of his sweat, she can _feel_ the hairs on the back of her neck rise. It takes all she has in her to fight the anger back down, but for some reason, Nedley doesn’t want to let sleeping wolves lie.

“Look, Nicole, I- I wanted to say–“ As he speaks, he twists a pen between his fingers, as if he could use it to break the thick ice of the awkwardness that hangs between them, coating his every stuttered word. “Just- if I’d had any idea what Bobo was planning–“

Nicole can’t listen to this anymore. The tiny jabs he’s making are far too weak to break through the sheet she’s under, and the cold streams inside her just like the dark water of the lake, leaving her drowning and alone. She snaps, “You’d have what? Stopped him?”

“What I did was wrong, I know that, and if I’d known what was–“

“No, sir," and the inflection drips with as much disdain as Doc's use of the word “cur.” "You knew exactly what you were doing, and what would happen."

Nicole slams her file shut, and pushes down the urge to fling it at Nedley, screaming. _This town does things to people_ , Chrissy had said, and Nicole isn’t going to let it turn her into the monster Wynonna sees in her.

“I’m going to work on these at home.”

Her silent home offers none of the ease she’d been hoping for. She moves through her evening routine on autopilot, half-filling the cat’s bowl with food before she remembers she doesn’t know where Calamity is any more.

She shovels a pre-mixed pasta sauce mechanically into her mouth, staring at the case file she’s not really reading. In the end, she throws half of it into a Tupperware, unable to force another bite past the lump in her throat.

Scrubbing the saucepan furiously, she tries to fight that lump back, struggles to keep down all the emotions that have been waiting just under the surface ever since she left the woods. She’s turned the heat in her apartment as high as she can without attracting the ire of her neighbors, but she still feels cold, far too cold, and she can’t stop the shakes that seize her body.

Her tears cut holes in the suds, and her breath comes ragged and strangled, and she can’t find the hole in the ice that will let her free of the weight of that cold.

All the work she’s done, and she’s not even strong enough to get through a single day without breaking down. _Get with it, Haught!_

She needs to be stronger than this, but she doesn’t know how.

//

It’s the only way. This is where Waverly will find the strength she needs.

The Blacksmith strides out of her cabin to meet Waverly at the gate, almost as if she’d been expecting to see her. Waverly wonders how much she hears, out here on the edge of the wilderness. She wonders who in town comes whispering to the Blacksmith, who tells her all the secrets, and what favor their whispers repay.

As if intentionally breaking her train of thought, a crow lands on a fence post and caws loudly.

“They’re an omen of death, aren’t they?” Waverly says.

“Only to those too foolish to heed their warning. If it’s the dead you are here to talk to, I’ll be no help to you. Let the past die. I have.”

“That’s not why I’m here. I– I need help.” Her words hang lamely in the air, and if she was hoping the Blacksmith would fill the space with questions, that hope dies. All she gets is an unrelenting stare. “I – _we_ – were attacked. And I couldn’t do anything, I couldn’t stop them, and once they got my talisman–“

“You let a stranger get close enough to touch your talisman? Goddess, didn’t Gus teach you anything?”

“She didn’t want me using it to fight.”

“With good reason, I’m thinking. You might be able to master the magic, but could you use it? Use it to hurt?”

Yes,” Waverly answers immediately. There’s no doubt in her mind, now. Not when they’ve only just buried Shorty.

The Blacksmith watches her, taking in Waverly's expression. “Alright then. Come this way, Waverly Earp. It’s time you learned what magic really is.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Today in Research is Fun: the experiment Jeremy is talking about was actually created by a team at MIT, who got e-coli to not only stop smelling like poop, but made it have different pleasant smells at different points in the experiment, so they’d know when it was ready for the next stage. Pretty cool. I got it from a Radiolab podcast, but there’s some good articles if you go a-Googling.
> 
> So this fic is at the halfway point, and we’ve hit a shift in the story. Kind of the peak of the rollercoaster, after chugging up the hill, and after this we are screaming in the mercy of gravity. Hopefully not dying. Fingers crossed. Thank you for sticking with me through the last few chapters, and while this one may have been a little bit of filler, there is more Scooby gang content ahead. Thank you for your patience, kind comments, kudos, and the reboobs and twits and tags – they really keep me going, big time, and bring the goofiest grin to my face. Honestly.
> 
> The hugest of thanks as always to The Gay Smurf, who is a beta without peer and a generally awesome human all round. Hug your neighborhood Smurf.


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